The Last Station English Historical Movie 2009
Cast And Crew
Starring:Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren,
James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti, Anne-Marie Duff
Director:Michael Hoffman
Writer:Michael Hoffman
Studio:Sony Pictures Classics
Genre:Drama, History
Release Date:December 4th, 2009
Plot Summary:
The final year of Russian Socialist writer Leo Tolstoy comes to the screen with Christopher Plummer in the lead role and Helen Mirren portraying his wife, Sofia. Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff co-star in the Warner Bros. production, directed by Michael Hoffman from the novel by Jay Parini
A historical drama based on Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things.Watch online Movie Trailer free The Last Station Hollywood film.The film Directed byMichael Hoffman .
The Last Station Hollywood Movie Synopsis :
The film, based on Jay Parini's 1990 novel, explores the turbulent final year in the life of the Russian writer and philosopher Tolstoy and his troubled marriage to wife, Sofia.
Story's general dynamics are easy to grasp. In his energetic old age -- in 1910, he's still writing and riding horseback -- the most revered author of his time (Plummer) lives on a grand if disorderly country estate and presides from a distance over a quasi-political cult in which young adherents do farm labor while trying to adhere to tenets of Tolstoyan philosophy such as pacifism, social equality, vegetarianism and celibacy, rules the lusty old man personally admits difficulty in adhering to.
The central issue at home, however, is the status of Tolstoy's will as regards the custody of his literary estate. Long assumed to be the provenance of his wife, the Countess Sofya (Mirren), it's now being claimed by Tolstoy's chief disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), as the rightful property of the Russian people. Very close, he believes, to getting the old man to sign away his life's work to the public domain, Chertkov engages the fastidious, worshipful young Valentin (James McAvoy) to become the writer's new assistant and Chertkov's spy, obliged to record and report everything said in the fraught household.
Writer-director Michael Hoffman, working from a novel by Jay Parini, keeps things bustling in the busy household and wrings droll humor from the way Tolstoy's most innocuous remarks are all recorded by slavish transcribers, while numerous cameramen are posted outside to document his movements for all time (some real-life snippets are played with the end titles). The awestruck Valentin is warmly welcomed by the writer, who, in Plummer's seductive, appealingly naturalistic performance, instantly emerges as a real man, not as a self-important legend. This Tolstoy does not need his ego bolstered by flatterers and sycophants; well aware of his status, he turns attention back on those around him. There is, impressively, virtually no ham in Plummer's work here, just stature and humanity.
Tolstoy loves his wife, but she occupies another realm altogether. A devotee of Italian opera, she adores melodrama and injects it into her daily life whenever she believes it applies, which is often.
She has given her husband 13 children in their 48-year marriage and helped him immeasurably with his work, copying out "War and Peace" six times. So she seems justifiably pained by her husband's willingness to be influenced by his "boyfriend" Chertkov, who, in his zealous rigidity, seems a picture-perfect premature communist ideologue as he brands the countess a bourgeois crazy woman.
Threaded between this pitched battle is Valentin's struggle to remain a pure Tolstoyan, a battle he loses shortly after meeting the writer's hedonistic daughter Masha (Kerry Condon) at the commune. After the initial seduction, however, their relationship becomes rather rote and uninteresting.
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