Russian Literature

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If you’re planning to go to Russia soon, or you’ve already been, or you’re just a big fan of great literature (and, of course, if like myself, you are an unrepentant Russophile), this current film is a must-see. The film was released for the first time in December of 2009 with excellent screen-writing (based on Jay Parini’s novel) and direction by American film director Michael Hoffman (noted for Midsummer Nights Dream, Restoration, and Promised Land). It beautifully chronicles the final months in the life of the great Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy). For the most part, it is historically accurate.

This is a joint German-Russian-UK production; German Producer Egoli Tossell chose to do the actual filming in eastern Germany, using the Schloss Stulpe in Saxony instead of the actual estate house at Yasnaya Polyana. This was because he feared that the historical estate might be damaged by filming it there. (Ironically, the house was occupied by German troops during WWII, and moderate damage was sustained at that time, when it was used as a field hospital.) Below is a recent photo of the real Tolstoy home in Yasnaya Polyana (now a State Museum).

The film opens in the summer of 1910 at Tolstoy’s family home (and birthplace): the country estate at Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula region of central Russia. The lush and wild pastoral beauty of that end-of-innocence provenance is captured perfectly by German cinematographer Sebastian Edschmid. Young, idealistic and naïve Valentin Bulgakov (played superbly by James McAvoy, the star of Atonement) is sent by Tolstoy’s Disciple Vladimir Chertkov (played by Paul Giametti of Lady in the Water) to be the master’s private secretary (and covert spy) at Yasnaya Polyana,

Tolstoy is portrayed masterfully by veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer. Here he is seen strolling through the Zakaz forest with McAvoy (Valentin), discussing the meaning of life and love. Valentin is awed by Tolstoy, and heartily desires to be a sincere Tolstoyan, (although he does not seem certain about the difference between being a Vegetarian and being Celibate.) The latter virtue is quickly erased by Masha (portrayed prettily by Kerry Condon), another Tolstoyan volunteer, who visits him in his quarters at the nearby Telyatinki.Commune.

The rather slow pace of the film is accelerated by our first glimpse of the brightest star:of all: Helen Miren as the Countess Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoya, his wife of 48 years. The dramatic crux is now revealed; she fears that Tolstoy, now 82 years old, is about to change his will in favor of Chertkov and the Tolstoyan movement. Sofya is no ordinary aged wife; 16 years his junior, she has born him 13 children (5 of whom died as infants), been his sexual protégé, his muse, and copied out War and Peace 6 times in long-hand. A devotee of Opera, Sofya is adept at playing the explosive and turbulent diva of this tragic-comic drama. Miren’s performance is excellent, rivaling her award-winning performance previously as Elizabeth II in The Queen (a very different leading lady, indeed). Miren has been nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in The Last Station; Christopher P:lummer has also been nominated as Best Supporing Actor. (No doubt who is the star of the show…)

But perhaps the real star is Russia Herself – that mysterious almost-Manichean nature of Her very being. Perpetual Contradiction and Conflict. A famous Englishman, Churchill, put it thus: “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” French writer, Andre Gide, could’ve been speaking as a Russian when he pronounced: “Please do not understand me too quickly!” Likewise, American poet, Walt Whitman, when he wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes!”

In all good stories, the drama always centers around conflict; and often in apparent contradictions. This is certainly true in The Last Station There is the practical and earthy passion of Masha played against the idealistic intellectuality of Valentin. And Valentin struggles to decide if Chertkov or Sofya are acting in the master’s best interests. Then there is the conflict between mother, Sofya, and daughter, Sasha, who sides with her father’s wishes rather than her mother’s. And the conflict between husband and wife over the disposition of his property, both physical and literary. And the almost-violent dispute between the jealous Countess and the zealous Disciple, Chertkov.

However, the major conflict is within Count Tolstoy himself. He must somehow reconcile his home-brewed philosophy of Christian Anarchy with his enormous wealth and property. He must reconcile the hope and dreams of his many disciples with the needs of his large family. In many ways, Tolstoy becomes a prisoner of his own image. And yet, for all his fumbling faults, Plummer portrays Tolstoy as a sincere and compassionate man, a man able to laugh at himself, and yet seriously search for the true meaning of life, a man who became the center of a movement that he did not really need, a man who does not want people to idolize him, or pay obeisance to him. In his soul, he is living again his grand epic: War and Peace.

The climax of the story occurs when Sofya discovers (by reading his diary) that Tolstoy has secretly signed the new will in favor of Chertkov. This brings on a massive histrionic fit by Sofya. Tolstoy, totally exasperated with her behavior, shouts that his position in his own house has become completely intolerable. And yet amidst all this screaming hatred, we know that they both love each other deeply. A previous touiching scene shows them recalling the intensity and playfulness of their former passion together.

While the exhausted Countess sleeps that night, Tolstoy, with the help of his personal doctor, his daughter, Sasha, and Valentin hastily, packs to flee Yasnaya Polyana. He has reached the breaking point, and he is leaving his previous life behind; However, he has no idea just where he will go…only the direction. He will catch the midnight train heading southeast, and Sasha will join him tomorrow morning at the first stop. She does board the train, but after a few miles, Sasha and the doctor, realize that Tolstoy has pushed himself beyond his failing endurance. The 3 of them disembark the train in the poor rustic settlement of Astapovo; there the stationmaster, recognizing the famous writer, offers his own adjacent home to them as a place of recovery. But there will be no recovery. Tolstoy’s heart is failing; Astapovo will be his last station.

Meanwhile, Sofya awakes to find that Tolstoy has left her. As if in a trance, she leaves the house in her nightgown and heads through the woods and throws herself in the lake. Conveniently, Valentin (who broke the news to her) follows her and pulls her from the water. Together they take the next train to Astapovo, where they arrive in the middle of box-camera paparazzi – the news has broken and a crowd has gathered, complete with over-night tents. (A hundred years later such media-circus events are all too familiar).

Chertkov has been summoned; he and Sasha block Sofya’s entrance to the modest house where Tolstoy lies dying. At the last moment, they relent, and she rushes to his death-bed. Here we see her sitting on that bed, comforting her daughter Sasha (played by Anne-Marie Duff), while Chertkov haughtily looks upon the tragic death scene.

The movie touched a lot of memories for me personally. When Valentin first meets Tolstoy, he remarks to Masha that Tolstoy simply wanted to talk about him, Valentin. I myself was similarly struck when I first met Henry Miller in southern California in 1966; he wanted to talk about me and my wife and daughter – why we were there, what we were doing. (It’s odd how great writers, noted for their intense self-introspection, are also interested in others.) I suppose, in some ways, Miller had some similarities to the great Tolstoy – in Big Sur, he had been the center of a veritable cult of love and anarchy; he also had established a reputation for breaking the taboos of his contemporary society.

So too, the commune at Telyatinki. reminded me of the hippie enclaves that sprang up in the woods north of San Francisco in the early 1970s. (After all, as The Scriptures say:
What has been is what will be/ And what has been done is what will be done/ There is nothing new under the sun.) And finally my amused appreciation for Chertkov’s magnificent line that he delivers after one of Sofya’s more vituperous tirades; “My God! If you were my wife, I would blow my brains out!...Or…or I’d go to America!” (Isn’t that what Dmitri is planning after his false conviction for patricide at the end of The Brothers Karamazov?)

When he was a young boy, Tolstoy’s beloved older brother Nikolai told him a fable that he could never forget…

“I used to believe that there was a green stick,
buried on the edge of a ravine in the Old Zakaz
Forest on which words were carved that would
destroy all the evil in the hearts of men and bring
them everything good.”
—Leo Tolstoy

When he was old, pate bald, skin sere.
Back humbled as the turtle's
For all his prayer.
He remembered John the Baptist leapt
After locusts for his food;
That his wife had begged for ice cream.
Cried for the hundred leaping tongues,
The flame of chandelier in their Moscow home;
That his children once caught
At the skirts of gnomic priests.
Constructed paper domes,
And kissed the ikons whose almond-eyes
Fixed not on them, but on God's throne;
That in the evening, reading,
His wife hung words out
like clothes upon a line;
That King Lear made him anxious.
Lev Tolstoi thumped his walking stick
Upon the path, moved on.
His thought fled to the cobbler's trade.
To a green stick still buried in a glade.
To the trains that run east and west.
-- Mary Freeman

The movie closes with the train bearing Tolstoy’s body heading back to Yasnaya Polyana. Here we see (though it is not shown in the film) his final resting place in the midst of his beloved Zakaz Forest. Perhaps the simple unmarked mound lies over the very spot where the elusive Green Stick itself lies buried.