The Last Station

Year: 2009
Genre: Drama/Biography
Directed: Michael Hoffman
Stars: Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy, John Sessions, Patrick Kennedy, Kerry Condon, Annie-Marie Duff
Production: Egoli Tossell Film


On paper, The Last Station (2009) seems like the perfect movie for the older, fussier set to enjoy. It features the amiable talents of former Von Trapp patriarch Christopher Plummer and The Queen (2006) herself Dame Helen Mirren, in a true to life story about the last days of Leo Tolstoy. To further bolster Last Station’s Oscar-bait pedigree, it costars Paul Giamatti as Tolstoy-ian neophyte Vladimir Chertkov and also features Professor X himself James McAvoy playing the audience’s perspective a likely composite of multiple people. If only things translated well from paper to celluloid. For like many period pieces, The Last Station suffers from being a beautiful canvas with no moving parts.

Help! I'm stuck in this painting and can't get out!

In Soviet Russia, Tolstoy hippie you!

Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) has been widely considered one of the best authors in the world, certainly among the best of the 19^th century. By the time the movie begins, he had already written War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and founded a utopian communal tenant farm in his boyhood home of Yasnaya Polyana. The leader of a new quasi-religious movement, Tolstoy’s most outspoken critic is not Tsar Nicholas but his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) who is upset by plans to give away their fortune and the copyrights of his novels to “the people”.

As alluded to earlier, the plot is largely taken from the point of view of James McAvoy’s character; a Tolstoy-ian with enormous respect for the aging author, scholar and theologian. His sympathies ping-pong between Tolstoy and his wife who still loves him but cannot get over the ideals he propagates but struggles to live up to. He struggles to see her perspective while she fails to take into account the changing times and a radicalized serf class that loathes nobility. It’s all very complex emotionally, politically and philosophically.

At least it likely was in real life. In the film however, all the characters, subplots and attempts to frame things in a larger context are color coded and ranked for your convenience. Instead of giving his audience the benefit of free thought director Michael Hoffman insults the intelligence of his audience by making good characters speak in profound statements while villains dwell in cynicism and pomposity. The music swells when it should and our McAvatar wonders down hallways and fields where only narrow perspective can be applied. In The Last Station, it’s impossible to truly sympathize or form an independent mindset of any character because all is seen through a non-objective perspective.

Now I’m not saying narrowly tailored movies are intrinsically bad. Most don’t come from a place of omnipotence but enjoy subjectivity through the mind of a specific character, in this case Valentin. But his character arc is so bland as to make everything around it seem pedestrian. Patton (1970) and Malcolm X (1992) were biased in their treatment of the WWII era and the Civil Rights Movement respectively; yet the trials and tribulations of the central characters made for good drama. The fact that both films had strong social and political perspectives was almost beside the point.

The story of Tolstoy and Sofya is a tale worth telling and has been told before in films like Lev Tolstoy (1985) and Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912). Yet the movie isn't told from either person’s perspective yet places itself clearly in Sofya’s camp. As a result, the film has layers of Hallmark Channel sentimentality. As Sofya’s plight becomes more immediate, the film devolves into a movie about a woman fighting for her rights in a divorce before divorce was a thing.

The Last Station was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Actress for Helen Mirren and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Plummer. In both cases their considerable talents were overshadowed by other admittedly better performances; Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (2010) and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds (2010). I say considerable because their performances alone made The Last Station slightly more than a mediocre historical biography. Yet despite this, The Last Station will ultimately be remembered for giving Christopher Plummer his first Oscar nomination in a 54-year screen acting career. He would go on to become the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar only two years later for Beginners (2012). So I guess in his case this Oscar-bait flick helped him out.

Eat it Max von Sydow!

Final Grade: D+