I've been waiting for this movie since last year and even did a post in anticipation. I'd love to see James McAvoy back doing period movies and The Last Station is apparently a great acting vehicle for someone as talented as McAvoy - and the cast is also superb!
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Based on the book by Jay Parini, The Last Station looks at the last days of Russia's greatest author, Count Leo Tolstoy. Considered an icon by all Russians, Tolstoy is the author of such acclaimed novels as 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina'. Wanting to spend his dying days in peace and quiet, Tolstoy fled from his home and away from the spotlight. He died nine days later in the house of the station master at Astapovo. Directed by Michael Hoffman, the cast include James McAvoy as Valentin Bulgakov, Christopher Plummer as Count Leo Tolstoy, Helen Mirren as Tolstoy's wife, Sofya, Pul Giamatti as Vladimir Chertkov and Anne-Marie Duff as Tolstoy's daughter, Sasha. There is this interesting interview with the author, Jay Parini at The BookShow and he said:
I think Tolstoy, like a lot of great artists, was somewhat sexually omnivorous, and I think it's almost certain that he occasionally had had...there's no doubt about it, he talks about it in his diaries, he slept with men occasionally throughout his life, so it's not a surprise that she picked up on some of this. And I certainly think by the age of 82 he was no longer...I don't think, frankly, he was ever involved sexually with his main disciple Chertkov but she was jealous of Chertkov, and then began to imagine that her 82-year-old husband...remember, this was in 1910 and if you're 82 in Russia in 1910 it's like being 110 nowadays, and the idea that he'd be having sex with Chertkov is ridiculous. Early in his life he'd had some sexual flings with men but that's a very small part of his life, tiny, and Sophia was just being crazy. [ read more ]
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- - -Here are some of the praises bestowed on the film: Says Anne Thompson at INDIEWire:
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At the screening, I sat next to a line of Tolstoy descendents, including great great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, who runs Yasnaya Poliana, the family estate south of Moscow, and his 24-year-old daughter Anastasia, a lovely literature grad student specializing in Nabokov at Oxford. Vladimir flew to Colorado through New York and Denver, and was returning the next day. Even though the movie was directed by an American, shot in Germany and stars a cast of English-speaking Brits, Vladimir said that he was glad that the film would spread the love of Tolstoy to the world. Several Telluride residents who are Tolstoy descendants read about the film in the program, contacted Vladimir and came to dinner with their Russian relatives Friday night.
Typically, the movie had a long road to getting made. But throughout its history actors reacted to its juicy roles. Producer Bonnie Arnold originally picked up the rights to Jay Parini’s 1990 novel about the last year in the life of Tolstoy after finally convincing elderly Anthony Quinn that he would never make the movie. For a long time Robbie Little, who raised money overseas, waited for Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep to add the movie to their schedules, but they never did. [ read more ]
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John Horn at the LA Times has this to say about the movie:
| The rags-to-riches twists at this year's festival, which wrapped up Monday, may not be as dramatic, but among the roughly two dozen features that premiered were any number of films whose path to the projection booth had been anything but easy -- with festival darling "The Last Station" standing apart for the arduousness of its journey.
Adapted from Jay Parini's historical novel "The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year," director Michael Hoffman's movie has been in the works for almost two decades. When Parini's book about Tolstoy and his relationship with his wife, Sophia, was published in 1990, actor Anthony Quinn believed it not only was the perfect source material for a movie, but also that he should play Tolstoy. The "Zorba the Greek" actor enlisted a then up-and-coming producer, Bonnie Arnold, to shepherd the project, but for every step forward, there was an equal step back. There were any number of screenplay revisions and false starts, but even Quinn's death in 2001 couldn't shake Arnold's belief in the project. "I always thought it would be a good movie," she said. "So I really didn't give up, ever." [ read more ]
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What's on your mind? Have you read the books of Leo Tolstoy? Are you looking forwrad to this movie, The Last Station? Let us know what you think!
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