Riveting tale of Tolstoy and his woman

Christopher Plummer and Hellen Mirren get sexier at 60

By Mildred Pierce

Everyone — even the illiterate — knows who Leo Tolstoy was. But how many can tell you the name of his wife? Tolstoy’s novels are famously about redemption through love, the only force that could get a man through nineteenth-century Russia with any dignity. The Last Station, now an award-winning film, comes to us next week with the story of Tolstoy and the woman who obviously inspired his art and the Big Ideas of his literature, the mother to his 13 children and the copy editor of War And Peace, the Countess Sofya.

In one of the greatest roles of his persistently brilliant career, Christopher Plummer plays the role of the great Count himself, a roaring, impossible author-genius who dares not go gently into that good night. Plummer has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the part, the first and long overdue nomination of an amazingly accomplished career. Foil to Tolstoy’s petulant, bearish genius is the equally formidable life partner. Perhaps no one could match Plummer in the role of Tolstoy as much as a Helen Mirren, reputedly the sexiest sixty-something actor in memory and herself so deserving of all the accolades her performance has garnered thus far. The Last Station is their story, the tale of two aging, passionate, larger-than-life individuals who are caught in a time-worn dynamic only five decades of marriage can produce. Tolstoy, at the end of his life, believed somewhat crazily in sexual abstinence, part of his intense moralizing position on just about everything. The drama spins on the tug-of-war between Sofya and a young protégé, played by the ever irresistible James McAvoy, for Tolstoy’s attentions. What’s so interesting is that the screenplay is drawn from real-life diaries kept by a number of acolytes who visited with Tolstoy in his later years. Through their eyes a portrait is drawn of the domineering couple as they faced each other in moral combat every day. Critics have pointed out that Mirren comes from Russian stock, and so perhaps she was able to channel a lot of vodka-fueled energy to play the part of a frustrated wife of a powerful and stubbornly celibate husband. There is one remarkable bedroom scene, however, for which you need to put on your adults-only glasses. It’s grand, ingenious, and marvelously acted, and if you need to practice some Russian and avoid the subtitles, just go for it.

The Last Station plays Thursday, March 4, at Empire Theaters Studio 12 in the Avalon Mall. Tickets are $9 for students and seniors, $10 regular admission. Tickets go on sale at 6:00 pm, show time is 7:00 pm.

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