The Last Station

Okay, so the only reason I went to see The Last Station in a theater is that two of the cast are nominated for Oscars. It's also about a writer, which is interesting, though it's not a writer I've ever read. But it turns out to one of a long string of period costume dramas that are a pale imitation of A Lion in Winter--an old married couple, in love but unable to stand each other--battling it out in their sunset years.

The writer is Leo Tolstoy, here played by Christopher Plummer, who after a long and esteemed career has nabbed his first Oscar nomination. If we are to believe the script, Tolstoy was a beloved figure in Russia, and also had some forward ways of thinking--he didn't believe in personal property, a philosophy that was akin to Marxism, but maintaining certain Christian principles. By 1910, the action of the film, he had inspired a movement of intellectuals who set up a commune, where they practiced tai chi and abstinence, although Tolstoy was something of a randy old goat.

His long-time wife, played by Helen Mirren, turns up her nose at the acolytes surrounding her husband. She's desperate to stop him changing his will and leaving the copyright of his work to the people. Thus we have the battle of wills comparable to that between Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in A Lion in Winter. Only in The Last Station, writer/director Michael Hoffman has chosen to frame the film fro the point of view of Tolstoy's secretary, a naive young man played by James McAvoy.

Why this was done is anybody's guess. Perhaps this was the structure of the film's basis, a novel by Jay Parini. In any event, it doesn't work. McAvoy's character is profoundly uninteresting, even when he's given a romance (with nudity) with fellow Tolstoyan Kerry Condon (who apparently ignored the memos about celibacy). We've got a movie about one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the modern age and he's in the periphery. Instead we get a dry discussion of copyright law and pre-revolutionary Russian social philosophy.

Oh, Hoffman tries to jazz things up. He's constantly letting us know that despite their differences, Tolstoy and his wife couldn't keep their hands off each other. We get a scene in which Mirren is forced to say, "I'm still your little chicken, and you're my big cock," followed by Plummer clucking and crowing like the fowl he has been compared to. Plummer is very good, nimbly capturing a man who knows he's great but tries to be humble, but Mirren--well, it was an impossible role, a spoiled, emotionally unbalanced woman who good use a strong prescription of Xanax. Hoffman appears to have given her zero direction.

Also in this mix is Paul Giammati, another actor who, when undirected, falls into bad habits. Here he is the supposed villain, a Tolstoyan who wants the copyright for the people, but acts like the banker who's ready to foreclose on the widow's mortgage. He literally twirls his mustache. There are also insinuations about his sexuality--Mirren calls him a "fat little catamite," but this thankfully goes further unexplored. Giammati utters his lines in a sensual growl that should have left everyone involved embarrassed. As for McEvoy, the less said the better. I don't blame him as much as the script, which evens give him the habit of sneezing when nervous.

Beyond these problems, the film is also poorly photographed, with numerous tight close-ups that seem barely in focus. Aside from Dr. Zhivago, I can't think of a Russian film that makes the country look attractive. It's a wonder anyone stays.

Though I did not care for this film, and spent much of it looking at my watch, there are things that caught my interest, the credit for which doesn't belong to the filmmakers but instead to the facts at hand. It was interesting to see how photographers camped out in front of Tolstoy's home--an early example of paparazzi. Over the closing credits actual film of Tolstoy is shown, which made me want to see a documentary about him.