The Last Station

As the morningmist clears from the fields and the distant church bells toll, Count Tolstoyremains asleep in the Spartan room of his otherwise comfortable country house.His wife, Sofya, enters and gazes with deep concern at an old man whose healthis failing. They probably have not made love in some time, not because thecount finds her repulsive, but because he has embraced celibacy as a spiritualimperative.

Once, they werehappy collaborators; she copied out the pages of his titanic novels, anddeepened his understanding of the women he created in fiction. But recent yearshave pulled them apart. The author of Warand Peace reinvented himself as a prophet, married to his dreams and themovement that clustered around them as much as to his wife.

Based on JayParini’s novel, The Last Station is afictionalized yet essentially truthful account of Tolstoy’s final days. It’s afeast of great acting that has earned Oscar nominations for its co-stars.Christopher Plummer plays Tolstoy as a complicated, fully rounded man, not astick figure signifying greatness, and Helen Mirren endows Sofya withpassionate, roiling emotion. While loving her husband despite his newpreoccupations, she is scornful of his ideals and contemptuous of the truebelievers gathered at his feet. Tolstoy’s favorite disciple, Chertkov, isdepicted with apt understatement by Paul Giamatti as an odious little man benton recreating the great author in his own image.

Tolstoy, however,has mixed feelings about the adoration of his followers. “Let me assure you,I’m not a very good Tolstoyan myself,” he says, horrifying the self-righteousChertkov with his self-deprecating good humor.

The mechanism of The Last Station’s plot is sprung by oneof the film’s least interesting characters, Tolstoy’s star-struck newsecretary. Valentin (James McAvoy) is sent by Chertkov to spy on the old man asthe Tolstoy estate swirls with intrigue over the great man’s will. Chertkovwants the valuable rights to the author’s work to pass into the hands of theTolstoyan movement as a public trust. Sofya wants them for herself, and herchildren choose sides. Unhappy wealthy families are all alike.

Tolstoy was acclaimedas the world’s greatest living writer and wasas shown in The Last Stationsurrounded by the rudiments of celebrity culturewith photographers, motion-picture cameras and barking reporters gathered onhis doorstep. His fans hung on every word and scribbled his utterances intonotebooks. He demanded a return to agrarian simplicity but found himself at thecenter of modern complexity. Tolstoy’s vegetarian, pacifist, celibateasceticism can be seen as an effort to wrest the monastic tradition of Russia’sEastern Orthodox faith from the hands of an official church that had become aninstrument of the state. He preached that all the world’s religions share acore truth: love. Despite his benign philosophy, he was a difficult man to livewith.

Directed by MichaelHoffman, The Last Station iselegantly attired with a lavish attention to the visual appearance of Russia on theeve of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. But like a superb stage play,the marital rows and regrets, the emotionally and historically believabledialogue between Tolstoy and Sofya, are the heart of the story.

Opens Feb. 12 at the Oriental Theatre.