The Last Station

I went to an advance screening of The Last Station today. The subject matter is the last days of Leo Tolstoy. During this period there was a great struggle between Chertkov, the chief Tolstoyan, who wanted Tolstoy to waive copyright on his novels so that everybody could read and benefit morally from his works, and Sofia, his wife, who wanted to protect the family inheritance. Tolstoy took to being a wandering ascetic to escape the intolerable atmosphere at home. He died in Astapovo railway station after a short illness.


A few things caught my notice. The title, from the 1990 same-titled biographical novel by Jay Parini, is almost certainly a play on the phrase Stations of the Cross, as by then Tolstoy had become almost saintly in the eyes of the peasants he supported. It's a novel, not history, so some events in the story are imagined, such as the romance between secretary Valentin and Masha. And it's coincidental that Helen Mirren is Russian on her father's side.


As for the film, the cinematography is faultless; the German/Russian co-production values are like those of a Merchant-Ivory period drama; even the actors speak like English folk. It's meant to be a tale of emotion versus doctrine, and James (Atonement) McAvoy is amusing as the naïve Valentin Bulgakov caught in the tug-of-war, but somehow the story's ideas are less developed than one would like. Still the scenes around the death of the literary giant are tear-jerkers.