The Last Station

Posted by will on January 26, 2011

Leo, or Lyev, Tolstoy, literary giant, leader amongst mere mortals, is probably best known for his works of realist fiction, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, neither of which I am familiar with nor, obviously, have taken the time to read. The faintest thing I know about Tolstoy’s masterpieces are that War and Peace is often symbolized as something rather long and monotonous and that they made a movie of Anna Karenina sometime in the late 90’s.

About Mr. Tolstoy I know little aside that he was a Russian pacifist and Christian anarchist. Apparently, his words would later have profound impacts on both Gandhi and MLK.

So, I came into the movie with an open mind, knowing that most cinematic portrayals are normally less than accurate, to see what The Last Station had to offer.

The film actually is centered around Valentin Bulgakov, a newly appointed private secretary to Tolstoy. There are a lot of small nuanced points and subplots to the actual primary tale but the story primarily follows the tug-of-war between Count Tolstoy’s wife, Sofya Tolstaya, and Tolstoy’s most devoted disciple and leader of the Tolstoyan movement, Vladimir Chertkov, over the signing of a new will. Bulgakov is caught in the middle and, is often times, left to mediate between the two sides. The most intriguing parts of this battle is the friction caused by Tolstoy’s idealistic principles (and thus, his resulting following) as opposed to Countess Sofya’s traditional and aristocratic views.

While there was much drama to be had over the course of the movie, I fail to find the purpose to make a movie about it (aside from the obvious “Let’s make a Tolstoy biopic” excuse). In the end, all of the sweat and tears shed over the new will seems pretty trivial. While this is certainly a key moment in Tolstoy and the Countess’ life, it is no more grandiose than your common everyday family drama and conflict you can find anywhere in the world. While there are certainly movies that carry the same themes, this vehicle seemed pretty petty and unimportant. Perhaps because I have no basic appreciation for Tolstoy do I find his final days pretty much “Whatever, dude”.

Another point of contention was the pace. I have noticed many of the movies I’ve reviewed recently I have complained about how much the movie dragged. I think there is something to be said about appropriate character development, movements within the story, and the fact I have been watching, almost exclusively, television series where a plot lasts normally in the 20 minute range. That all being said, there was a lot of overkill in the primary plots but little development in the subplots that ran throughout. Unfortunately, I would have liked to have seen less time spent on the meat and little bit more finesse to the secondary stories. Because of this, I felt like there was incomplete character development, especially in Bulgakov.

The strongest parts of the movies were the performances by the leads. James McAvoy turns in a solid performance as Valentin-in-the-Middle to the rock and sock’em Russians (Helen Mirren’s Countess Sofya and Paul Giamatti’s Chertkov). Christopher Plummer (Captain Von Trapp in the Sound of Music) is your Tolstoy, the apparent contemporary to writers with long white beards (I’m looking at you Walt Whitman). While the acting was solid and plausible to the characters it still felt like treading water to reach a conclusion I ended up not caring about.

The Verdict:

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