Movie Review: The Last Station

This week I took a ride to Russia by way of England. Not literally of course, travel frightens and confuses me. I got a chance to see The Last Station, which opens at Film Streams this weekend. I know you can't rush out and see it right away after reading this, but hopefully this will wet your whistle for a bit of British biography (of a Russian dude).

War and Preach
Tolstoy’s tale is told by way of the Themes

Writer/director Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, is likely as engaging a movie as can be made about a battle over Russian copyright ownership. Every bit as visually exhilarating as it sounds, the entirely non-Russkie cast deploys British accents and relentless grimacing to bombastic melodramatic effect. The air of importance is more preached than earned, but if you freely opt to watch a dramatization of Leo Tolstoy’s last year, you’re likely inclined to buy what’s being sold.

As if resigned to please the eyes as little as possible, the film opens with terse text presented in the least offensive type font imaginable. We’re told that Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is a pretty big deal, having inspired a worldwide Tolstoyan movement centered on passive resistance and other harmonious ideals. His wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), loves him as much as she loathes Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a leader of the movement and insensitive douche.

Chertkov entrusts the committed Tolstoyan Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) to live at the family estate and to keep tabs on the manic Sofya in order to ensure that she doesn’t interfere with Chertkov’s plans to wrest control of the copyrights to Tolstoy’s writings. Sofya rather reasonably wants the rights to provide for the 13 children she bore ole Leo and attempts to persuade Valentin to sympathize. When he isn’t busy being conflicted about who’s right about the rights, Valetin is busy gettin’ his swerve on with Masha (Kerry Condon), a fellow devotee. The juxtaposition of the young couple discovering love and the elderly duo struggling to hang on to it plays out against a climactic signing of a piece of paper.

Obviously, what’s on display here isn’t derived from plot or eye candy, but top-notch acting from all involved. Although Mirren and Plummer sport the same screen time, Plummer earned a Best Supporting Oscar nod whereas Mirren earned a Best Actress nom, likely because she’s Helen freakin’ Mirren. Plummer is at his scraggly-bearded best, while Mirren mostly chews scenery because she’s earned that right. In reality, it’s McAvoy that holds the film together, as his transformation from wide-eyed idealist to slightly downtrodden realist is as close as the film comes to a significant development.

Surprisingly funny at times and never boring (or enthralling), this well-acted endeavor creates a desire to seek more about Tolstoy. Now, if it had both created and satisfied said desire, The Last Station would have been first rate.

Grade = B