The Last Station (2009)

Movie of the week

The movie follows the story of Leo and Sofya Tolstoy, married 43 years, and the battle that raged between them at the end of Leo’s life.

The movie is a typical period piece that nails the most essential elements of a genre film. The art direction by Mark Rosinski and Heike Wolf is fantastic, the costumes by Monika Jacobs are stunning and Sergei Yevtushenko’s score is to die for.

This extraordinary narrative beautifully adapted by director Michael Hoffman is one of the crowning achievements of his career. Hoffman writes and directs with meticulousness and accuracy.

Synopsis

In 1910, acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy devotes more of his time to the Tolstoyan Movement than to writing. His movement’s tenets are brotherly love and world peace through pacifism and a denouncement of material wealth and physical love. His chief follower Vladimir Chertkov does everything to advance the cause.

Chertkov hires a young man, Valentin Bulgakov, to be Tolstoy’s personal secretary in carrying out this work. Tolstoy’s wife, the Countess Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy, believes her husband’s writings are rightfully hers after he dies, as she believes she deserves the monetary benefits derived from them.

This places a strain between those in the movement, especially Chertkov and the Tolstoys’ daughter Sasha, and the Countess. Bulgatov tries to mediate their dispute, seeking to follow Toystoy’s heart rather than his words.