The Last Station

Directed by Michael Hoffman. Starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Condon 15A cert, lim release, 112 min

IF YOU were planning an archetypal Oscar movie you could do worse than sketch a drama in which two international treasures – Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, say – play the aging Leo Tolstoy and his combative, misused wife. Sure enough, both actors have got their nods from the Academy. If this hadn’t happened, then Michael Hoffman, the film’s director and writer, could have been forgiven for, in emulation of Tolstoy’s greatest character, throwing himself fatally under a train.

The Last Stationis more than a little stagey and never escapes from the suffocating weight of its triple-quilted dialogue, but, in between some terrific set-pieces, it does have interesting things to say about the birth of 20th-century celebrity.

James McAvoy, touchingly on edge, plays a young idealist who, to his delight, secures a job as Tolstoy’s secretary. When he gets to the estate, he becomes entangled in a dispute between the great man and his wife. Charmed by the oily influence peddler Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), Tolstoy is considering changing his will and disinheriting his unfortunate life partner.

Chertkov and other vanguards of the Tolstoyan movement – an austere clan dedicated to chastity and shared ownership – regard Sofya Tolstoy as an hysterical solipsist. She’s convinced that they’re all plotting against her. As a tidy dramatic knot is untied, both parties turn out to be correct.

Plummer, an actor whose status rises with every passing decade, makes something properly complex out of Tolstoy: his asceticism would be more convincing if he were not so susceptible to flattery. And Mirren grasps her role with two eager, white-knuckled talons. After all, parts don't come along every day that offer an actor the opportunity to fling crockery to the floor andrend her garments in fits of theatrical anguish. It's not the subtlest performance of the Dame's career, but, by golly, you are left in no doubt that you've just seen some acting.