The Last Station is a little-known movie about the last year or so of Tolstoy’s life, starring Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sonya. It is also a clinic in the acting art by two of the finest professionals in the field.
The conflict that animates the drama is the question of who will own the rights to Tolstoy’s work when he dies. Tolstoy and his legions of followers do not believe in private property. As they see it, the public at large is the rightful inheritor of his creative output. His wife Sonya just as strongly believes that Tolstoy’s primary obligation is to provide for the welfare of his family. A stand-off? No, because of the powerful influence of Chertkov, a leader of the Tolstoy movement and a friend and confidante of the master, played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti. The title of the film refers to the station at the end of the railroad line where Tolstoy spends his last days.
The facts as portrayed by the film are as accurate as one should expect of a movie (I checked it against Henri Troyat’s biography). But the grabber here is not verisimilitude but the power of the acting. Plummer is Tolstoy. Mirren is Sonya. (Did you know that Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Vasilevna Mironov?) I have not seen an acting tour de force of this magnitude in a long, long time.
As so often happens in this house, my enthusiasm for the film led me to seek out Christopher Plummer’s memoir, In Spite of Myself. It is a long book, 648 pages in hard cover, and there is no evidence that anyone collaborated with him in the writing. Now, Plummer, Canadian by birth, is 81 years old, and the book was published in 2008, so one must be impressed by his energy if nothing else. But the writing quality is excellent, revealing an impressive memory and real wit.
The title of the book, I guess, refers to the fact that he has lived a successful life in his chosen career in spite of the fact that he was generally irresponsible, a drinker, a womanizer, and an ingrate. He rather cheerfully admits all this, and the gallery of the rich and famous whose lives intersect with his makes the book endlessly fascinating – in spite of himself.
I recommend the movie and the book, unreservedly. And now I will start Helen Mirren’s memoir, In the Frame.
