Revered Russian author Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) are deeply in love, but that doesn’t mean either is living in marital bliss. As great as the good times are the bad ones are getting crazier and more intolerable by the minute, the entire household becoming split down the middle about which one of the pair is most to blame.

Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren in Sony Pictures Classics' The Last Station

Into this fray comes Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), the author’s new secretary and devoted follower of the Tolstoyan religion named after him. Suddenly he becomes witness to the testy exchanges between Sofya and Leo as well as the even more cantankerous ones between the former and the latter’s best friend and confidant Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). But as things come to a head, mainly over arguments concerning the copyrights to the author’s works, Valentin finds himself falling in love with fellow Tolstoy follower Masha (Kerry Condon), their young relationship on the rise just as his boss’ is beginning to fall.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about in regards to The Last Station, director Michael Hoffman’s (The Emperor’s Club) pleasant if forgettable adaptation of Jay Parini’s best-selling novel. While well acted the movie comes off as a lesser “Masterpiece Theatre” presentation, and by the time it was over I has trouble caring about any of the characters or their plight. I didn’t have an emotional reaction to any of the dramatics flowing between them all, and where any of them went from here was a thing I simply didn’t want to spend a second thinking about.

All of this sounds much worse than it actually is. Both Plummer and Mirren are quite wonderful, and while I personally wouldn’t have honored them with Academy Award nominations I can easily see why voters felt compelled to do so. They have fantastic chemistry, and as angry and combative as their give and take relationship gets there is a miraculous aura of love and forgiveness hovering between the two that’s beautifully sublime.

The movie also looks just stupendous. From Patrizia von Brandenstein’s (Nights in Rodanthe) production design to Sebastian Edschmid’s (Adam Resurrected) cinematography it’s hard to come up with issues to a single technical aspect. There is a tactile feel to everything shown onscreen that gives the picture a believability factor most period pieces would kill for, and not once did I ever feel like anything shown was out of place or falsely presented.

As nice as all of this is, however, there is a fundamental problem here that’s impossible to get past. The whole movie is seen through Valentin’s eyes but he is such a nondescript presence even his love story has a nonchalant ambiance that’s decidedly unappealing. His relationship with Masha is almost an afterthought, while the complexities brewing between his and Chertkov sadly go just about nowhere. The film brings up numerous issues and than doesn’t do a thing with any of them, and by the time everyone comes back together at the end the drama of this reunion packs no emotional wallop whatsoever. 

In many ways The Last Station is a perfectly nice motion picture. It’s well acted by all involved, looks great and tells an historical story very few know anything about. But while I enjoyed numerous aspects of the film as a whole it never came together for me. An easy one to respect, Hoffman’s latest just didn’t take me to that place of enjoyment where I could give it an easy recommendation. Instead I find myself giving a halfhearted nod in the right direction, and while there is no punishment to heading to the theatre to speak of the crime is that, in the end, the finished product fails to live up to its massive literary potential.

Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)  

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