Review of The Last Station (2009) by Jason R — 27 Jun 2010

For the sake of this film, it's too bad Tolstoy wasn't actually British. Because this movie sure seems to wish he had been. This movie aspires to something every movie should avoid at all costs: a Merchant-Ivory production. Helen Mirren gives a customarily strong, if unsurprising, performance as Tolstoy's long-suffering wife, but the part doesn't make much sense the way it's been constructed here. Sofya appears to be the victim of a vast, vicious, and inexplicable plot. Then again, she was a woman in Russia in the early 20th century, so something rings true, but the audience's sympathies for her make the rest of the characters seem like unconscionable bullies, including Tolstoy. McAvoy's is a throwaway role, underwritten and weak. He should play a villain soon, before he becomes the next Hugh Grant.

One way this movie might have avoided the sheen of Masterpiece Theatre would have been to engage more with the emerging forms of visual media that this film depicts in the background. At the turn of the century, the movie tells us, Tolstoy was the world's most famous author; photography and film played a major role in his celebrity, the movie quietly suggests. But why not investigate the new media landscape, circa 1910? So that Helen Mirren can yell in a few more scenes? Yep, I guess that's why. Immanently skippable.