The Last Station Movie Review

It's a brave collective of souls that takes on the challenge (or perhaps folly) of putting together a film based on the end of a life of someone who wrote a book no one actually reads, and solidly held a view no one wants to hear. In order to dodge some of the pitfalls of such a crazy undertaking, The Last Station is actually not so much a story about Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), but is instead a story about Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy). Nice save, you're thinking.

Tolstoy is old and famous, and he has a keen interest in a communal living/socialist/something political viewpoint. His wife (Helen Mirren) has a keen interest in not seeing everything her family has given away. Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) has a keen interest in securing the rights to all of Tolstoy's work, theoretically with the idea that his words should belong to the people.

We come into this little world by way of Valentin, a young man who hopes to learn from Tolstoy. He is taken in, moved to the commune, and becomes Tolstoy's secretary. The film, whatever level of interest it may have had otherwise, is made fairly fascinating by turning itself into the story of simply a man caught in the middle. Chertkov and Lady Tolstoy both intend to pull young Valentin into their corner, and hope for his aid in influencing the great man himself. Unfortunately for them, he is drawn to both sides, and has no idea what to do about anything.

While I have little knowledge of the true story at play here, the drama unfolds in a wonderfully realistic way, especially considering that the plot has little else to work with. That probably sounds strange, but even though there is another angle involving Valentin's love life, the story really only has one key piece of drama driving it, and you frequently find such plots overly plowing through what honesty there is behind such emotion. Here, it never tries too hard, and allows things to develop in a more accessible way than audiences might be used to in such an effort. Minus, let's say, one particular scene, which may be a bit much.

On the strictly Tolstoy side of events, I'm not sure the interest holds solidly. Plummer and Mirren both work their parts well, but while we are meant to wonder at relationships, love, and making life work through surprisingly difficult circumstances, I'm not sure that we aren't actually witnessing making life work through screwy, old codgerdom. It's not that interesting, and certainly isn't particularly relevant.

Watching poor Valentin however, that's a pretty solid film. The unsuspecting young man who only wanted to help Tolstoy with his work, is thrown to the wolves, and has to at least pretend to play every side, when he'd like nothing more than to be rid of sides altogether.

In the end, I suspect because we are watching through Valentin's eyes, Tolstoy's whole world seems to lose meaning by virtue of its extreme interest in having meaning. Love is Tolstoy's convenient mantra and purportedly the grand scheme behind his grand scheme. Love of everyone. Valentin witnesses the strange turns early on in his stay, because his romance is forbidden, what with sexual relations being frowned upon at the commune and so on, but when actually talking to Tolstoy, he doesn't seem at all the sort of person who would have such restrictions.

It all sounds so good on paper, but a strict adherence to love of everyone, which nevertheless somehow leads to leaving your wife, well... that's the sort of thing that might lead Valentin to rethink just how clever the old boy really is. This is especially true, in the harrowed eyes of a Valentin who has been through the gauntlet, when he discovers that his rule-breaking love understood what Tolstoy was trying to say better than Tolstoy ever would. Not because she could explain love in great detail, but because she knew it when she saw it, and because she knew the secret of Tolstoy's inability to connect with his own ideas - when you really get love, you go where it leads, you don't try to tell it where to go.

Rating:  

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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