Cast: Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti

Director: Michael Hoffman

Screenwriters: Michael Hoffman, Jay Parini (novel)

Tolstoy was quite a guy, not only was he declared by many to be one of the greatest social realist novelists ever but he also pioneered educational reform for the poor, believed in equality and championed passive resistance long before Gandhi or Martin Luther King (had a nice beard too). So a fitting subject for a biopic then, and it really is a wonder that one hasn’t been done before.

Such an iconic subject could have easily been deified in this film but instead Hoffman rightly chooses to present him as a man who still undergoes doubts and frustrations despite his status. The film also shows the added pressures that being a ‘genius’ entails.

The Last Station, set in 1910, details the last year of Tolstoy’s (Plummer) life. It shows the progress made with the Tolstoyian movement, the commune that has been set up in his honour and the devoted idealists that promote his ideas. One of these idealists Vladimir Chertkov (Giamatti) makes it his task to see that Tolstoy’s will gives the Russian people his works for free. Strong opposition to this comes from Tolstoy’s wife Countess Sofya (Mirren) a woman determined to keep her family’s inheritance intact. Chertkov consequently hires the idealistic Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy) to be Tosltoy’s secretary and spy on Sofya. Valentin then gets caught up in a battle between his ideals and his sympathy for Sofya, as well as losing some of these ideals upon meeting and falling in love with the strong-minded Masha (Kerry Condon).

The relationship between Sofya and Tolstoy is absorbing and well developed, showing how even an intellectual like Tolstoy can be undone by love. So along with the beautifully tender and childlike moments between them – in one scene Sofya gets Tolstoy to be her “big cockâ€? (a phrase that will of course cause much unintentional laughter) and “crowâ€? for her.  We constantly see the frustrations caused by having such a melodramatic, stubborn and conservative wife opposed to his egalitarian views. We at first see Sofya as simply a selfish woman, indifferent to the plight of the poor (she views giving money to peasants useless as they also will only spend it on “drink and whores.â€?). However, like Valentin, we gradually realise that Sofya is genuinely concerned for the plight of her family and we see her vulnerability in the face of Chertkov’s ruthless manipulations.

Plummer and Mirren are superb, as we have come to expect, in their roles (those Oscar noms are certainly not for nothing), Plummer portraying Tolstoy as a witty and genial old man with a hint of mischievousness. He also captures the contradictions in his character (in one scene he reveals his doubts to Valentin about the sanctity of casual sexual relations, despite the Tolstoyian ideal being that sex is impure). Meanwhile Mirren is enthralling to watch playing Sofya like a tragic Shakesperian heroine, an emotional bomb ready to explode, whilst also revealing how girlish she can be and how much she truly cares for her husband.

McAvoy plays the role of the naive ingénue who gradually matures throughout the film, and Giamatti, ever a brilliant character actor, convincingly portrays Chertkov as a pompous man with dubious motives and a cruel streak. John Sessions is also brilliantly funny in his small role as an obsequious hanger-on dedicated to writing down everything that happens in Tolstoy’s life.  But the film really belongs to Plummer and Mirren and their last moments together in the film are genuinely terribly moving.

So even if you haven’t read War and Peace or Anna Karenina just yet, don’t be put off.  This is a literary biopic that, like Bright Star, deals with the life and loves of a greatly fascinating man; and you don’t have to be a literary critic to appreciate that.

By Priscilla Eyles

The Last Station is released 19th February via Optimum