The Last Station (2009)

“”Your youth and your desire for happiness reminds me cruelly of my age and the impossibility of happiness for me.” When I was courting Sofya, she was so young and pure, it seemed impossible that I’d ever have her. I didn’t want to tell her how I felt and I wanted to tell her nothing else. So I wrote down a string of letters and asked her if she could decipher them. She looked completely confused, thinking it was a game or… I gave her one clue. The firs two Y’s, I said, stand for “your youth” and then the most miraculous thing happened. She simply spoke the phrase, my phrase as if she had read my mind. In that moment, we both knew we would always be together. For those first years, we were incredibly happy, terrifyingly happy. ” – Leo Tolstoy

Number of Times Seen – 1 (6 Nov 2018)

Brief Synopsis – In the waning years of is life, the famous Leo Tolstoy tries to find a way to balance his literary fame and his desire for a life devoid of possessions.

My Take on it – This is an extremely boring film that wasn’t easy to get through at all.

The script is quite incoherent and makes little sense and takes away from any kind of impact or insightfulness that the story might have had.

The pacing is amazingly slow and not much manages to happen along the way.

The bets thin here is Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy who does a nice job carrying the film despite the fact that he has his character pretty much mumble the uninteresting script.

He did manage t get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor tho with this role.

The commune that the characters live on is portrayed in a strange way so that is seems as if Tolstoy and his followers found a new ingenious way to live yet none seem very happy about it.

There are too many awkward scenes that are just too strange to make things enjoyable at all.

Bottom Line – Pretty boring film that moves at a snails pace without doing much along the way. Plummer is the best thing about this film and despite his Best Supporting Oscar Nomination, he manages to mumble his way through the pretty incoherent script which takes away from any kind of impact this film might have.  The way that the commune is portrayed makes it seem as if Tolstoy and his followers found a new way of life but things are just too strange and awkward throughout that this isn’t an enjoyable film.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Christopher Plummer was 80 during the filming, just 2 years younger than Tolstoy was in the period depicted in the film. The director Michael Hoffman really liked the fact that Christopher Plummer could play his own age.  (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (3/10)

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z