The Last Station

Yesterday I was reading Arts & Letters section in mer.cl and I saw the title “Cien años de Tolstoi”, immediately I remembered the film called The Last Station, and how different it’s from other movies that I’d saw, because the history is not about absolute happiness or sadness, the end is a lesson for life without special effects.

The Last Station is a 2009 biographical film about Leo Tolstoy (characterized by Christopher Plummer). It was directed by Michael Hoffman and based on the same name novel by Jay Parini. The film show the unusual last days of Tolstoy's life.

Tolstoy had a successful and good life, also a long-standing and long marriage, but he was an idealist (he is opposed to the bad things in the world). This was the cause of odds with his wife Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren) and her aristocratic and conventionally religious views. Tolstoy’s copyrights were the prize disputed by his secretary Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) and his wife. He was the more famous person in Russia and in the whole world, thus he had to find the middle point between fame and life without materialism. At the end Tolstoy put his writings into the public domain, it was a blow to his desesperated wife. Until Tolstoy didn’t know how to deal with that and leave his wife and their house, to an undisclosed location where he can continue his work undisturbed, with the support of this daughter Masha (Kerry Condon) and his naïve young secretary Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy). After that health’s Tolstoy was worse, and he couldn’t move forward. He didn’t want to see his wife, while she waited for days at a train bagon. He finally relented and agreed to see his wife just a few minutes after he died, with more than 80 years and a terrible winter pneumonia Tolstoy died alongside his wife. The film ends with his death near the Astapovo train station.

An interesting question that I leave to you, is Why he left his home and his wife who shared his life for 48 years? Despite loving her so much, he let her go.

Whit this film Helen Mirren won the Best Actress award at the 2009 Rome International Film Festival for her performance.

Unfortunately I don’t see an early release (if this it’ll exists) of this film in Chile, so I leave a trailer to see, and if you want I give you a download link enjoy it :)