DVD Review: The Last Station (2009)

TEMPESTUOUS DOMESTIC DRAMA

It may seem tragi-comic to picture Countess Sofia Tolstoy the wife of Leo Tolstoy, the literary giant who got almost got elevated to the status of 'prophet' towards the end of his life, sneaking onto balconies and hovering outside meeting rooms to overhear conversations about her husband's will. And then jumping right in (literally) to create a grand scene. With the paparazzi recording her stunts from a respectful distance, to top it all. Yet, that's what Michael Hoffman's film The Last Station, which presents a semi-fictionalised account of the last months of the great man's life, and ending with his death in the yard of an obscure railway station not far from his home, Yasnaya Polyana, suggests. 

With Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy, a cantankerous old man who doesn't quite know what to do with the legend that's building itself around him, not in the least, on account of his denunciation of, among other things, private property and the institution of marriage, and Helen Mirren as Sofia, his passionately dramatic wife and companion of 48 years, there's ample room for histrionics. As someone who has seen the man at close quarters for too long to take his latter-day sainthood seriously, she keeps pricking holes into Tolstoy's image as thinker, philosopher and demi-god. Meanwhile, she finds a staunch adversary in his disciple Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti playing up the part as a moustache-twirling caricature) who is determined to ensure that Tolstoy writes off the rights of his great works to the Russian people, thereby living by his principles. Sofia demands her rights, not just as wife, but for the hard work and faith she put into his work -- including writing down six drafts of War and Peace! 

Tolstoy has either moved on beyond such practical issues or has simply gone senile. In either event, he struggles to stay true to his friend Chertkov while warding off the nagging demands of his wife who he once clearly loved. Caught in this conundrum is a naive, idealist Tolstoyan, Valentin (James McAvoy) planted as Tolstoy's secretary by Chertkov in order to spy on Sofia. Valentin has his own assessment of the situation and while he sets off with the intention of carrying out orders, his interaction with Sofia leads him to believe that things are not as straightforward as they appear to be.

Valentin also struggles to live up to Tolstoy's advocacy of celibacy (after having produced 13 children himself and being rather indiscreet in his alliances as a young man, as Sofia pointedly notes) and gets drawn towards the charming Masha (Kerry Condon) who lives on the Tolstoy farm (an idyllic agrarian community based on Tolstoy's principles -- the kind Mahatma Gandhi set up in South Africa). The deeper he falls in love with Masha, the more ambiguous his stand on the Tolstoy domestic saga gets. The old couple squabble bitterly like children and Chertkov becomes more and more comical in his bid to get Tolstoy to sign the will he has drafted for him. 

Perhaps in an attempt to get away from it all, Tolstoy takes off from his home in the dead of the night to travel aimlessly around the country. But failing health forces him to get off at Astapova station, where he finally dies at the age of 82. Hence the film's title. Rather than approach this weighty subject with gravity, Hoffman employs an irreverent and affectionate tone, that's moving without being excessively thought-provoking. You do wonder about the peculiar dilemmas the situation would have posed -- pulling a man between his public and private selves with equal force. The Valentin-Masha romance offsets the tragedy of the older couple with the innocence and enthusiasm of youth in the first flush of love. 

Both Plummer and Mirren infuse their characters with an affability that's touching. Mirren, in particular, plays the drama queen with ruthless perfection. Her performance is elaborately theatrical, and probably so by design. You may or may not get a sense of the real facts of their lives through the film, but you do get a glimpse of what it may have been like for a great man to live by his ideals and for his wife, to live with him even though she didn't know how.