THE LAST STATION
Release date: 19 February
Certificate: 15
113 mins
Germany/Russia/UK 2009
Director: Michael Hoffman
Starring: James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, Paul Giamatti, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Condon
When Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy, ATONEMENT) successfully applies for the position of personal secretary to the legendary writer Leo Tolstoy (Plummer, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS), he is delighted at the opportunity to learn from the revered and wise man. What he hasn’t anticipated is being pulled into a bitter struggle over Tolstoy’s legacy.
Behind the scenes, Tolstoy’s wife, the Countess Sofya (Mirren, THE QUEEN), and his disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Giamatti, SIDEWAYS), are engaged in a feud over control of Tolstoy’s works after his death. Chertkov insists that the works should be the property of the people, while Sofya is concerned that this will mean the author’s family are not provided for.
As Valentin’s feelings for another young disciple, Masha (Condon, NED KELLY), grow, the Countess acts as his confidante and he soon finds his loyalties divided. As passions flare, the infighting drives Tolstoy from his home. With his health failing him, the battle for his legacy shows no sign of abating.
Continuing Christopher Plummer’s late-career renaissance, his Tolstoy is a magnificent physical creation, at once savage and spellbinding. And Helen Mirren rightly won the award for Best Actress at this year’s Rome Film Festival.
With admirable support from a stellar cast, THE LAST STATION is a perceptive and humanising account of a literary giant struggling to achieve a balance in the ledger of his life, between the demands of genius and the convictions of his soul.
//Russia’s Soul Cinema//
“You will see,” wrote Leo Tolstoy of the film projector shortly before his death, “that this little clicking contraption with the revolving handle will make a revolution in the life of writers. It is a direct attack on the old methods of literary art. We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and to the cold machine. A new form of writing will be necessary. I have thought of that and I can feel what is coming.”
Tolstoy lucidly foresaw an era in which cinema would come to exert a profound effect on literature, creating a new relationship between the written and spoken word. Equally, the influence of Russia’s 19th-century literary giants – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Pushkin, Chekhov and Gogol – can still be felt in the country’s cinema.
“It is good that classical Russian literature of the 19th century is still important for many filmmakers and it informs their work,” says Aleksandr Sokurov, one of the country’s foremost cine-poets and director of Chechen war drama ALEXANDRA.
“As long as this classical Russian literature lives in the consciousness and the conscience and the memory, they are going to produce these soulful works of art. When there is no more influence of Russian literature then the soul will be gone. Only literature can define the criteria on which art depends.”
To Sokurov, “the most serious, profound and masterfully executed works of art are found in literature. All ideas and all possible plots have already been dealt with in literature. First there was the Word; it’s not by chance.”
