If the dialogue in The Last Station had been delivered about twice as fast, it would not be a stretch to label the film as a screwball tragedy. Its characters engage in clever repartee and trade barbs throughout, but ultimately it is the story of two people who have grown remote from one another in their old age. They dance and maneuver around each other, sometimes relying on third parties as instruments and proxies. This couple is a rather famous one–Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren). Tolstoy, near the end of his life, had spawned an idealistic movement, the inventively named Tolstoyans, a group eschewing personal property and even sex in favor of communal living and hard work. As the film is only too happy to remind us, these sorts of philosophies often attract those who are already having trouble getting laid.
Case in point: Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a zealous Tolstoyan (and Leo’s self-appointed lieutenant) who enlists Valentin, a fresh-faced young writer (James McAvoy) as Tolstoy’s personal secretary, dispatching him out to the famous author’s pastoral estate/commune, and recruiting him as a spy against the Countess Sofya, who, as Chertkov asserts, is wholly opposed to everything her husband stands for. Upon his arrival, Valentin is befriended, even adopted, both by Tolstoy himself and Sofya, who herself asks him to keep watch against her enemies. She is in the midst of a protracted heartbreak, as her husband drifts ever further into his own self-styled asceticism, while she stubbornly clings to the complications of a worldly and romantic life. Valentin discovers his own worldly complications in the form of Masha (Kerry Condon), a fellow Tolstoyan inhabiting the commune who has–to Valentin–appealingly flexible notions about sex.
The Last Station doesn’t venture very far from the style of a typical Hollywood pastoral period romance. It is certainly well acted, and Plummer earns his Oscar nomination handily. Mirren is always a pleasure to watch. Giamatti more or less reprises his role from 2006′s The Illusionist, twirly mustache and all. McAvoy and Condon are appropriately charming and earnest as the young mirrors to their elders’ tragic drama. I can’t say the film matches the delicacy or poetry of recent films like Jane Campion‘s phenomenal Bright Star, but it is an engaging enough study of the distressing conflict between stubborn idealism and love. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Biography/Drama
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 6/22/10
[...] THE LAST STATION [...]
[...] THE LAST STATION [...]