Cinema Nova, 18/03/2010
Status: Behind, but gaining ground.
Although it’s not out for another week or so, I caught The Last Station at a preview screening at my local independent cinema. There’s a lot going for this movie. It has a top-shelf cast (JAMES McAVOY, Wanted; HELEN MIRREN, The Queen; CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus; PAUL GIAMATTI, Cold Souls) and, being about the last days of Tolstoy, looked promisingly like it would be able to engage both the heart and the head.
It starts off terrifically, with warmth, energy and (surprisingly) humor as idealistic Tolstoyan Valentin (McAvoy) becomes Tolstoy’s (Plummer) private secretary. Tolstoy is elderly and unwell, and struggling to finish the manifesto that will most likely be his last work. Valentin has not one but two parallel journeys in the film (one a fairly straight-forward sexual awakening, the other an ideological one). Throw Mrs Tolstoy (Mirren) into the mix, a volatile personality distraught that her soon-to-be-dead husband's work is being wilfully misunderstood and it’s a juicy set-up ripe with potential conflict.
I kind of liked that none of the British actors had to sport pretendy Russian accents. Although odd for the first thirty seconds, it was the right choice for the film in the long run (it was continuously jarring in Defiance, for example). Sadly, though, they made American Giamatti pretend to be British. Although he can be really great, like in Cold Souls or Sideways or American Splendor, he seems unable to act and pretend to be British all at once, like here or the dismal The Illusionist, so he seemed like a glaringly odd choice.
The Last Station is beautifully shot in some lovely places and the script is pleasingly focused on character and journey. Well, up until Giamatti arrives on the scene and then all the early momentum is lost. It is saved from being totally boring by some really impressive performances from Mirren, McAvoy and Plumer, but I could help but think (based on the first half) that it could have been so much more.
