The Last Station (2009)

Directed by: Michael Hoffman | 112 minutes | drama, biography, history | Actors: Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, Paul Giamatti, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Condon, John Sessions, Patrick Kennedy, Tomas Spencer, David Masterson, Nenad Lucic, Maximilian Gärtner

“Everything I know, I know only because of love”, that’s how ‘The Last Station’ opens. This – albeit slightly modified – sentence is a quote from Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ and immediately covers the film’s load. What could have been a stiff film about the last year in the life of this world-renowned Russian writer has been transformed by Michael Hoffman into a powerful, explosive drama full of humor and subtleties.

Soft sunbeams with dust particles, mosquitoes in the forest buzzing around the head, creaking footsteps over the slightly frozen ground, but also a snoring Tolstoy. It’s the little things that make the historical narrative alive and feel. Hoffman’s choice not to follow his life through the eyes of Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) himself is also a fine one. It creates the space to make it more than a biopic. By sketching life through Tolstoy’s assistant Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), it becomes a drama about spirituality and love. The love for the people, for the profession, for your idol, for your father, for freedom, for your wife of 47 years or the early love for someone you have just met. All kinds are intertwined in ‘The Last Station’ and it is becoming increasingly clear that these different kinds of loves are increasingly powerful drivers of the different characters who then exhibit increasingly extreme behavior.

Helen Mirren goes all out in the melodramatic and comedic role of Tolstoy’s wife Sofya and is a joy to watch. She climbs over a balcony to overhear a conversation, she plunges into a lake to drown herself after learning that Tolstoy doesn’t want to see her anymore, she constantly asks her husband if he loves her and smashes the crockery after an argument. There is also a lot to laugh about when she shoots the portrait of Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), for example. Or the way she cheerfully answers him when he politely tells her during his visit that he is happy to see her: “I’m happy to make you happy”. Sofya and Chertkov can drink each other’s blood because they are both fighting for Tolstoy. Such a nice sneer in between is typical of ‘The Last Station’, it shows the tension in the film but also how fast and humorous it is. Christopher Plummer portrays Tolstoy very credibly as a fragile, sometimes fed up old man instead of an icon. He doesn’t dominate the canvas or take the wind out of the other player’s sails, or worse, the story.

As always, Giamatti gives his roles his own twist and deepens Chertkov’s role by letting him become obsessive at the end. You have to get used to James McAvoy at the beginning, in one way or another he seems to fall by the wayside in the list of actors. He’s well cast as the naive assistant, maybe he comes across a little too goofy and aloof. Because of his spectator role, there is also little stage for him to show himself and he should not take up too much space. Nicely conceived and it is remarkable that almost every character has its own thing. Such as Tolstoy’s snoring, or Valentin’s sniggering when he gets nervous, Chertkov’s curly mustache, Tolstoy’s personal physician Dushan constantly writing in a book or the fact that Valentin’s love Masha always seems to be chopping wood. And finally, the music has also been fine-tuned. This does not dominate but complements and, as befits a film that takes place in the early 20th century, when there was only classical music, it is performed by the Hermitage Music Academy Orchestra. Everything seems to have been well thought out in ‘The Last Station’ and at the same time nothing seems too thought out. Actors feel free in their roles and clearly enjoy themselves. It has become a human film about love and intrigue, full of humor and subtleties. It took a long time for ‘The Last Station’ to arrive, but it’s well worth the wait.