THE LAST STATION (Michael Hoffman 2010)

[Chris Knipp]

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER AND HELEN MIRREN IN THE LAST STATION

Michael Hoffman: THE LAST STATION (2010)

Muddled ending

Review by Chris Knipp

As The Last Station begins, Leo (more correctly Lev or Liev) Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) has given up novel-writing for the dissemination of his own personal Tolstoyan ideology based on a literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus. It calls upon the privileged to devote themselves to vegetarianism, pacifism, and helping the poor. Tolstoy's ideas about non-violent resistance were later to have a strong influence on Gandhi and Martin Luther King. At this point communities in Russia have been set up to practice his principles, and we glimpse one, though Tolstoy himself lives at one remove from it on his big estate, eighty-something, long-bearded, still riding horses, writing, and arguing (often affectionately) with his wife. Given to fits of generosity that have long infuriated her, he's now planning to turn over the rights to his literary works (War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and the rest) to the Russian people. This means royalties won't go to his heirs. Sofya (Helen Mirren), his passionate and outspoken wife of 48 years, is vehemently opposed to this, which she sees as an abandonment of the rights and needs of Tolstoy's own family. She was supposed to be the literary executor. Her chief opponent on this issue aside from Tolstoy himself is his arch-supporter and secretary, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti); Chertkov's vying with Sofya for control of the rights.

And vying is hardly the word; hyperventilating might be more appropriate. Mirren shouts. Plummer growls. Giamatti barks. The Last Station is a heavy-breathing historical weepie. It's a Russo-German production in which everything happens and nothing happens and everybody speaks English. More British than Russian despite its authentic-looking costumes and sets, this is one of those posh Masterpiece Theater-style productions that draws you in but never feels quite convincing. It's a feast of overacting, tumult, and peasant clothing made to order for older members of the middle-class art house audience. It's hard to see who's the greatest drama queen here, though Mirren, who's played a remarkable array of great women in her time including the wife of Caligula, a gangland kingpin's moll and -- in more restrained mode -- a very un-drama queen Queen of England, probably earns the scenery-chewing prize; she lets out all the stops. The yelling, hissing, ranting, and sobbing never stop. Sometimes, as they send out great puffs of black smoke and chug noisily into remote Russian outposts, including Astapovo station where the writer lives his last days, even the antique railway trains seem to be overacting.

As a wide-eyed and innocent new secretary named Valentin sent by Chertkov to spy on the family, the young Scottish actor James McAvoy blushes, grins, tears up, and sneezes -- nervous reactions because he's so happy and awed to be in the presence of the great man; the cutesy-ness of this is cloying. The cast also includes McAvoy's real-life wife Anne-Marie Duff, as Sasha, Tolstoy's daughter. But Valentin isn't involved with Sasha; he connects with a feisty young member of the household at Tolstoy's country estate called Masha (Kerry Condon). Masha agrees with the idealistic ethical principles of the group but thinks everyone's a pompous bore. Tolstoy seems to be against sex, but Valentin breaks the rules with Masha. McAvoy chews up the scenery in his own way. His character's rather saccharine purity contrasts with the overbearing power struggle and ideological posturing, but never really becomes clearly relevant to the main drama. Maybe he's meant to draw in a younger audience for the movie, but the effort is feeble.

Much is made of separations and reunions. Masha leaves the estate, putting Valentin in a quandary. He's too wound up in the Tolstoy family drama to go and join her but it's his loss. Tolstoy is bent on ending his days like a monk and goes off leaving Sofya behind to abandon everything in a remote area, but he never makes it beyond the train station at Astapovo, where he falls ill. Sofya comes, is sent away, comes back. It all ends in a funeral scene full of Russian peasant faces (recruited actually in Germany, where the film was mostly shot), a sequence Eisenstein would have done much better. This story is an example of the irony of the rich and famous posing as simple souls. Tolstoy thinks himself alone in his last days but there are hundreds of journalists and photographers outside and the note-taking every time he opens his mouth never ceases.

Christopher Plummer, who really is 80, is a real acting lion. He's grand in his long gray beard and looks quite like the real Tolstoy. But what he's doing is hamming it up. Giamatti, a good journeyman whose best roles are still the lovable losers he played in American Splendor and Sideways, looks a lot like the real Chertkov and if we're just not meant to like him, he's done enough. Mirren is a great actress, but here she's just shrill. Plummer's and Mirren's foreplay scene in which they cavort in bed and cock-a-doodle-do and giggle is about as embarrassing as discreet art house cinema can get. Working from a recent historical novel by Jay Parini, Michael Hoffman has not exercised sufficient restraint over his cast in this misguided effort. The actors are at their most, but not at their best. And, worse yet, it's never clear what we're supposed to make of these people, and whether Tolstoy's last days were futile, tragic, or just highly publicized.

[oscar jubis]

This review of The Last Station assumes the condensed form of film criticism which philosopher Stanley Cavell calls an "epitome", in reference to the 50-word review of Groundhog Day he wrote for The New York Times. These capsule reviews have found exemplary expression in the pages of The New Yorker and The Chicago Reader. The challenge is to communicate with maximum economy and precision what one finds most meaningful about a movie.

Michael Hoffman's best film since Restoration is less a film about Tolstoy's last days than a dialectic pitting eros and agape. Either way, The Last Station is a film about love. Both the film and the novel by Jay Parini on which it is based, invents a youthful romance between Tolstoy's naive secretary and a woman named Masha to parallel the 48 year-old wheezing marriage of Tolstoy and Sofya. The film is best appreciated as a dramatization of the tension between altruism and romantic love, and between asceticism and sensualism. The Last Station's point of view is most clearly conveyed through the eroticism of both couples' bedroom scenes, the last-minute reunification of the young couple and the tempestuous performance style of the whole cast. It's a perfect date movie for mature middlebrows. While the intense tone helps this engaging film avoid the stodgy quality of some heritage films, The Last Station occasionally skirts dangerously close to the extravagance of the camp aesthetic.

[Chris Knipp]

Given your last line I can't object to your other generalizations. However you may be confusiing "camp aesthetic" and just camp. A spade can be called a spade, especially in 50 words. I'm glad to see you withhold your usual disdain for The New Yorker in calling their short reviews "exemplary." But then again, one wonders how you are using the word.

[oscar jubis]

Camp in this usage is an aesthetic and I do mean to praise the capsule reviews written in both publications.

I think The Last Station is a good movie. I was disappointed however with the protagonist's failure of nerve during the scene in which a dying Tolstoy asks for Sofya. Dramatically, the film needs to demonstrate that Valentin has acquired the moral authority, that he has come-of-age, to overcome the conventional authority of Chertkov and Tolstoy's daughter. The character's passivity during that scene leads me to believe he is too weak to "carry" the movie and structure the narrative around him. Then he musters the nerve to send a telegram begging Masha to come. This redeems him, but not completely.

[Chris Knipp]

You are using "exemplary" in a misleading way, because it's the least normal association for the word of three possible definitions, but I anticipated that. The critic of The New Yorker , David Denby, liked The Last Station very much, though I don't know that you would agree with his terms of praise: " this production, directed by Michael Hoffman, is like a great night at the theatre—the two performing demons go at each other full tilt and produce scenes of Shakespearean affection, chagrin, and rage." His review was very admiring. Obviously if I called it "a heavy-breathing historical weepie," and said "The actors are at their most, but not at their best," I was dissatisfied, to put it mildly. The film received generally favorable reviews and was a big success with the older US art house audience. I don't know if what you see as Valentin's failure of nerve is paralleled in the Jay Parini novel, which I haven't read. He is too weak to "carry" the movie, but of course the hyperventilating notables are who carry it. Nonetheless the points to a weakness in the structure that I agree on. It's a movie about famous people, with minor "real" people added in to carry along the action, but that doesn't always work.