Last Station Movie
Janie Mccorey
The Last Station is a 2009 internationally-produced English-language biographical drama film written and directed by Michael Hoffman, and based on Jay Parini's 1990 biographical novel of the same name, which chronicled the final months of Leo Tolstoy's life.[5] The film stars Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sofya Tolstaya. The film is about the battle between Sofya and his disciple Vladimir Chertkov for his legacy and the copyright of his works.[6] The film premiered at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival.
In 1910, the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, his disciples, led by Vladimir Chertkov, manoeuvre against his wife, Sofya, for control over Tolstoy's works after his death. The main setting is the Tolstoy country estate of Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy and Sofya have had a long, passionate marriage, but his spiritual ideals and asceticism (he is opposed, for example, to private property) are at odds with her more aristocratic and conventionally religious views.
Contention focuses on a new will that the "Tolstoyans" are attempting to persuade him to sign. It would place all of his copyrights into the public domain, supposedly leaving his family without adequate support. The maneuvering is seen through the eyes of Tolstoy's new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, who finds himself mediating between the two sides. He also has a love affair with one of the Tolstoyans, Masha.
Ultimately, Tolstoy signs the new will and travels to an undisclosed location where he can continue his work undisturbed. After his departure, Sofya unsuccessfully attempts suicide. During the journey, Tolstoy falls ill. The film ends with his death near the Astapovo railway station where Sofya is allowed by their daughter to see him just moments before his death. The closing credits state that in 1914 the Russian senate reverted the copyrights of Tolstoy's work to Sofya.
Filming took place in the German federal states of Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg (Studio Babelsberg) and Thuringia, the city of Leipzig in Saxony and at historical locations in Russia.[5] The location for Jasnaja Poljana, the residence of the Tolstoy family, was the Schloss Stlpe palace near Luckenwalde in Brandenburg. The station of the small German town of Pretzsch stood in for Astapovo, the "last station" of the title. Still a working rural station, the Pretzsch station was closed for two weeks for filming.[7]
Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights and gave the film an awards-qualifying limited release[8] on 23 December 2009, with a wide release on 15 January 2010. It was released in Germany on 28 January 2010.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 147 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Michael Hoffman's script doesn't quite live up to its famous subject, but this Tolstoy biopic benefits from a spellbinding tour de force performance by Helen Mirren."[9] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[10]
Critic Philip French praised McAvoy for bringing "the same amiable diffidence he brought to the role of Idi Amin's confidant in The Last King of Scotland".[6] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called Hoffman's direction "accomplished", and the film's centerpiece "the spectacular back and forth between Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren...For those who enjoy actors who can play it up without ever overplaying their hands, "The Last Station" is the destination of choice."[11] On the negative side, critic Xan Brooks characterized the film as a "genteel domestic farce" and faulted the director for "pander[ing] to the worst impulses of the cast".[12]
If Joyce was a drunk and a roisterer, how different was the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who was a vegetarian and pacifist, and recommended (although did not practice) celibacy? "The Last Station" focuses also on his wife, Sofya, who after bearing his 13 children thought him a late arrival to celibacy and accused him of confusing himself with Christ. Yet it's because of the writing of Joyce and Tolstoy that we know about their wives at all. Well, the same is true of George Eliot's husband.
"The Last Station" focuses on the last year of Count Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), a full-bearded Shakespearian figure presiding over a household of intrigues. The chief schemer is Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), his intense follower, who idealistically believes Tolstoy should leave his literary fortune to the Russian people. It's just the sort of idea that Tolstoy might seize upon in his utopian zeal. Sofya (Helen Mirren), on behalf of herself and her children, is livid.
Chertkov, the quasi-leader of Tolstoy's quasi-cult, hires a young man named Valentin (James McAvoy) to become the count's private secretary. In this capacity, he is to act as a double agent, observing moments between Leo and Sofya when Chertkov would not be welcome.
It might be hard for us to understand how seriously Tolstoy was taken at the time. To call him comparable in stature to Gandhi would not be an exaggeration, and indeed Gandhi adopted many of his ideas. Tolstoy in his 82nd year remained active and robust, but everyone knew his end might be approaching, and the Russian equivalent of paparazzi and gossips lurked in the neighborhood. Imagine Perez Hilton staking out J.D. Salinger.
Tolstoy was thought a great man and still is, but in a way his greatness distracts from how good he was as a writer. When I was young, the expression "reading War and Peace" was used as a synonym for idly wasting an immense chunk of time. Foolishly believing this, I read Dostoyevsky and Chekhov but not Tolstoy, and it was only when I came late to Anna Karenina that I realized he wrote page-turners. In Time magazine's compilation of 125 lists of the 10 greatest novels of all time, War and Peace and Anna Karenina placed first and third. (You didn't ask, but Madame Bovary was second; Lolita, fourth, and Huckleberry Finn, fifth.)
"The Last Station" has the look of a Merchant-Ivory film, with the pastoral setting, the dashing costumery, the meals taken on lawns. But did Merchant and Ivory ever deal with such a demonstrative family? If the British are known for suppressing their emotions, the Russians seem to bellow their whims. If a British woman in Merchant-Ivory land desires sex, she bestows a significant glance in the candlelight. Sofya clucks like a chicken to arouse old Leo's rooster.
The dramatic movement in the film takes place mostly within Valentin, who joins the household already an acolyte of Tolstoy. Young and handsome, he says he is celibate. Sofya has him pegged as gay, but Masha (Kerry Condon), a nubile Tolstoyian, pegs him otherwise. Valentin also takes note that Tolstoy, like many charismatic leaders, exempts himself from his own teachings. The 13 children provide a hint, and his private secretary cannot have avoided observing that although the count and countess fight over his will, a truce is observed at bedtime, and the enemies meet between the lines.
As the formidable patriarch, Christopher Plummer avoids any temptation (if he felt one) to play Tolstoy as a Great Man. He does what is more amusing; he plays him as a Man Who Knows He Is Considered Great. Helen Mirren plays a wife who knows his flaws, but has loved him since the day they met. To be fair, no man who wrote that fiction could be other than wise and warm about human nature.
Mirren and Plummer make Leo and Sofya Tolstoy more vital than you might expect in a historical picture. Giamatti has a specialty in seeming to be up to something, and McAvoy and Condon take on a glow from feeling noble while sinning. In real life, I learn, Tolstoy provided Sofya with more unpleasant sunset years, but could we stand to see Helen Mirren treated like that?
I've gone through the app settings and I'm not seeing a way to change the default station, nor how to just have it go to the last station listened to (like it used to do), nor how to just have it not open a station but to put me on my stations list so I can tap the one I want.
Yeah....my Pandora always opens to same station. regardless of what I was last listening to. Whats it take to address this issue, since would like it to work as you have indicated, by playing the last listened to station when opening.
I'm having this issue as well, but also on the Chrome browser on my PC. The accepted solution is for Android devices. It is also happening there as well, which means it's not my devices. The fact that it's a cross platform issue means it's my profile or the way the browser and app are saving the last viewed station to it.
I have a station to put my 2 month old to sleep with, a couple stations to listen to at work, and then my fun stations to use with my sub woofers. Putting the phone down by my 2 month old and turning his tunes back on only to be hit with a fun station that wakes him up is not fun. It's happened. I'll have been listening to it less than half an hour before and it switches. I've also had the WAY wrong song come through my speakers at work because it switched stations on the browser when I closed it for lunch. I've just gotten in the habit of making sure my system sound is off before turning pandora on no matter which device I'm using.
On both my Samsung phone (J3v 2018 model running on Pie) & tablet (Galaxy Tab A 9.7 running on Nougat) the app plays the first station at the top of my list of stations instead of the one I was listening to previously like it used to. Both the phone & tablet are up to date & have the latest version of the app. Did this happen because I recently upgraded to plus or is it a bug? What can I do to get the app to play the station I last played instead of the first station which now seems to be the default station that plays whenever the app is opened?
Alyssa, I've noticed this happens when connected with a pair of bluetooth earbuds. Clearing app cache, data, and reinstalling the app did not help. Also a new issue suddenly popped up. It now started saying that my "internet connection was lost & it was switching to an offline station". However, I WAS CONNECTED to the internet nor did I ever turn off wifi.
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