Ein russischer Sommer

I've been looking forward to this movie for a while now and finally saw it last night. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about it! The entire cast was excellent; both lead and supporting roles were strong and added such depth to the movie. McAvoy, Mirren, Plummer and Giamatti were especially brilliant in every aspect. They each showed the strengths and weaknesses of the characters they portrayed, and it was a pleasure to see them interact. Although smaller roles, Duff and Condon played significant characters and were also very good in their portrayal. Just an amazing ensemble cast. I was surprised, and saddened, that this movie didn't get more attention; two nominations (Plummer and Mirren) was not nearly enough.

I've heard others say the movie was too slow but I can't say that the pace of the movie bothered me much. I found the story quite interesting and the scenery and costumes added to the movie without being distracting. I would certainly see this emotional and thought-provoking movie again!

This was an excellent historical film based on the relationship between Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), during Tolstoy's final years. The film also explores Tolstoy's relationship with his Assistant, Valentin (James McAvoy) and his cabal of acolytes, lead by Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). The main tension comes between Vladimir, who wants Tolstoy to bequeath his copyrights to "The Russian People" and Sofya, who naturally would like the copyrights reserved for herself and family.

Mirren earned an Oscar nomination for Lead Actress and Plummer received one for Supporting Actor. I believe both were well earned. I liked the performance from the entire cast, particularly McAvoy as the adoring Assistant to Tolstoy. The screenplay was excellent and the Director, Michael Hoffman, did an outstanding job bringing pre-Communist Russia to life. The time period is 1910 and the cinematography beautifully captured the era. During the closing credits, actual film of Tolstoy and his Wife was run, underscoring what a great job the Director did in filming this.

A great movie and well worth seeing or renting.

"Your works are the birthright of the Russian people." Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) in The Last Station

Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Leo Tolstoy drifted at the end of his life into spiritualism but of a more naturalistic kind, which disavowed materialism, espoused celibacy, and talked about the simple power of love. Michael Hoffman's The Last Station chronicles in historical drama fashion Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) struggle with his wife, Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), over his desire to bequeath his works to the Russian people and thus, as she thought, deny her and her family rightful inheritance.

The film has an operatic tone due in large part to Mirren's occasional histrionics as she argues with Tolstoy and faces off Chertkov, Tolstoy's close friend and a force for the Tolstoyan movement, which espoused the writer's philosophy of austere life, feeling at times like a stripped down transcendentalism popular in 19th century America. The first half of the film has some electric moments because of Sofya's dramatics and her attempt to win over Tolstoy's new personal secretary, Valentin Bolgokov (James McAvoy). When the film turns to the business of Tolstoy dying, matters become slowly boring with overwrought lamentation and a slow up of the frenetic family dissonance of the first part.

The Last Station is a study in life's ironies: Tolstoy has been far from a celibate in life and therefore not a good Tolstoyan. Bolgokov is annoyingly enthusiastic about his new position and the tenets of the movement, except when he makes love to his new girlfriend, Masha (Kerry Condon) and even then he is such a prig as to be even more annoying than the histrionic Sofya. Recently innocent Richard narrated the story in Me and Orson Welles, and famously, Nick in The Great Gatsby. All three share in varying degrees intimacy with a famous person, with Bolgokov the least impressive.

Tolstoy does eventually die, Sofya gets the copyright, and I got an hour of splendid family invective along with my thoughts about the great writer of War and Peace and Anna Karenina reduced to annoying bickering about inheritance. Yet I enjoyed those thoughts about a sublime writer as a flawed human being whose final philosophy was about love and peace. Love he had in abundance; peace did not arrive.

Rather than present at least a GLIMPSE of Tolstoy's brilliance, Christopher Plummer depicts him as a one-dimensional, gruff, lovable old coot. He hardly has any lines throughout the movie, and the other characters are equally devoid of any depth. Helen Mirren's character is supposed to be self-centered and calculating, but even she breaks down into saccharine lightness at the end. The entire film is a descent into maudlin, pretentious sentimentality, and is only atmospheric, not substantive. Instead of being an accurate portrayal of early 1900's Russia, we are given "Russia-lite." We don't have a clue about Tolstoy's inner thoughts and motivations, because we see only an affable geezer. This was a squandered opportunity to reveal the mind of a complicated, social visionary. The director chose cute over interesting.

The American director Michael Hoffman, in adapting Jay Prini's semi-factual novel about the last year in the life of the great 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, makes as his central character not the famous author but his wet behind the ears 23 year old secretary Valentin who is hired by Count Tolstoy's devout admirer Vladimir Chertkoff to both work for Tolstoy and spy on the countess, Sofya. She is not sympathetic to her aging husband's anarcho-Christian leanings, nor to the movement based on his philosophy, and fears the family will be deprived of the benefit of Tolstoy's copyrights.

Valentin, played fetchingly by James McAvoy, is a bewildered witness to the crisis in the stormy relationship between Tolstoy and his wife, which results in Tolstoy fleeing Sofya and his estate, only to die at a lonely railway station many miles away, with the world's media (such as it was in 1910) looking on. Unfortunately Valentin, based on a real person, is not only green but rather ineffectual and he is in the story as a witness rather than as an actor. One of the features of Tolstoyans was that they all seemed to have kept diaries and these provided Parini with most of his material. You can see why Hoffman made Valentin the central character, but his ineptitude is rather tiresome and his seduction by the lovely Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon) (in contradiction to Tolstoyan-mandated chastity) is all a bit beside the point. It is the relationship between Leo (Lev) and Sofya that provides the real drama here, and the final scenes between them are genuinely moving.

Helen Mirren as the histrionic Sofya is alone worth the price of admission and Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy is convincing, though he demonstrates a lot more personal warmth than the real Tolstoy apparently did. Despite most of the filming being done in Germany the Russian atmosphere and countryside were well-evoked though I did wonder whether the serfs were real – none of them seemed to speak. There were also some inconsistencies in the screenplay – in one scene Valentin is at the Tolstoyan commune "two hours" from Tolstoy's estate at Yasnaya Polyana, yet in a later scene he rides between the two places seemingly in a few minutes.

Apart from the love story (and Tolstoy did maintain that love was all that really mattered), the other theme is the contrast between high ideals and the personal power play evident in the "movement". The Chertkoff character (slyly played by Paul Giamatti) is a Machiavellian schemer, unlike his real-life model, and even if Sofya had been more level-headed she had something to fear. But in the end the politics peter out and what remains is the rather sad end of a great literary figure feeding a media frenzy. Tolstoy was not actually Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi (with whom he corresponded) but he deserved a more dignified death – he valued peace, not war.