CINEMA: The Last Station

He was one of the greatest writers ever to come out of Russia and so it’s funny to discover how little we actually know about the life (and death) of Count Leo Tolstoy.

Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) was a man of means with a beautiful country estate and yet, through the urgings of his most devoted follower Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), he rejected his title and in the last year of his life embraced a simple, peasant lifestyle threatening to leave all his wealth and the future rights to his writings to the Russian people. This infuriated his long-suffering wife Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), who felt he would be betraying his family if he did such a thing.

When a new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), arrives at the estate to help Tolstoy get his papers in order he finds Sofya and Chertkov almost at war while the ailing Tolstoy just wants peace and quiet. Can Valentin act as a go-between restoring harmony to the Tolstoy household, or will he find himself sucked into the increasingly bruising battle?

This handsome, elegant film starts promisingly enough but soon the strident tone of the personal conflicts it portrays drowns out the more subtle nuances of character that occasionally peep through.

There’s a lovely scene of Tolstoy and Sofya in bed, displaying that kind of comfortable synchronicity only couples that have been married for a lifetime can achieve, yet in another scene around the lunch table one argument gets so overblown as to reach amateur dramatic heights.

The other problem with the movie is its structure – the character of Valentin the new secretary proves to be totally superfluous to our understanding of Tolstoy and Sofya and what makes them tick. Had the film simply concentrated on the complex, infuriating relationship between this dynamic pair it would have been stronger and more centred.