‘The Last Station’

In the opening lines of "Anna Karenina," -- a Top 5 fixture on the "Greatest Novels Ever" charts -- Leo Tolstoy writes, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

If you've ever wondered what prompted Tolstoy's insightful observation, "The Last Station" offers an extreme close-up of the great writer's embittered, embattled marriage in its final year.

Helen Mirren is nominated for a best actress Academy Award for her performance as Countess Sofya Tolstoy, while Christopher Plummer's up for a best supporting actor Oscar as that legendary literary lion, Count Leo Tolstoy.

Neither's likely to win -- but not because they're not deserving. (We'll save the Oscar-politics outcries for another time.)

"The Last Station" takes us back a century, to 1910 -- the final year of Tolstoy's reign as the world's leading novelist.

His influence is so powerful that an international Tolstoyan movement has arisen, devoted to such utopian ideals as celibacy, communal property, pacifism and passive resistance.

Ah, but ideals often clash with real life -- as Tolstoy's own life demonstrates. After all, Tolstoy (Plummer) happens to be an aristocrat, with a palatial estate. He and his wife, Sofya, had 13 children. (And if you think that was tough work, Sofya also copied out her husband's massive masterwork, "War and Peace," in longhand -- six times.)

Now that Tolstoy's approaching his life's sunset, however, Sofya's influence has waned.

She's losing ground to Tolstoy's ardent friend and acolyte, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), who hopes to outmaneuver Sofya and gain control of Tolstoy's copyrights. In the name of the people, of course.

To that end, Chertkov hires a starry-eyed Tolstoyan, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), to serve as the great man's private secretary -- and gives Valentin a diary so he can chart the various intrigues in the Tolstoy household.

Once Valentin arrives at Tolstoy's estate, Sofya gives him a warm welcome -- and hands him another diary, so she can keep tabs on the scheming Chertkov and his allies.

Thus Valentin steps into the pivotal role of man in the middle -- and audience surrogate.

Through him, we experience the dizzying whirl of larger-than-life personalities in conflict. To say nothing of the dizzying whirl of personal passion, when he makes the acquaintance of Masha ("Rome's" Kerry Condon), a free-thinking Tolstoyan who believes not at all in the practice of celibacy. (Which, inevitably and understandably, inspires Valentin to re-examine his own devotion to personal chastity.)

Their young romance, however, pales in comparison to the complex, confounding -- yet utterly compelling -- ties binding the Count and Countess Tolstoy.

At times, they're loving and devoted spouses radiating the accumulated warmth of a lifetime together. At other times, they're hostile combatants, eager to inflict devastating emotional wounds with vicious precision. (After all, no one knows the other's weaknesses and vulnerabilities as well as they do.)

For all its personal focus, however, "The Last Station" also offers some intriguing glimpses of a time, a century ago, that very much resembles our own.

From instant-message telegraphic communication to a miraculous recording technology that can capture the human voice -- whether Tolstoy's or a coloratura soprano's -- the air positively crackles with new devices, and new ideas, capable of transforming lives.

And with reporters milling about the estate and movie cameras documenting Tolstoy's every move, it's almost as if reality-TV and the paparazzi have arrived to provide 'round-the-clock tabloid coverage.

Working from Jay Parini's novel, writer-director Michael Hoffman ("Restoration," "The Emperor's Club") establishes a persuasive period context that also reinforces the story's contemporary connections.

More importantly, however, "The Last Station" captures the endless, essential conflict between theory and practice -- especially when it comes to the maddeningly contrary impulses of the human heart.

McAvoy's soulful naivete and Giamatti's unctuous self-righteousness suggest the conflict, but Mirren and Plummer embody it with go-for-the-gusto spirit.

As the great Tolstoy, Plummer displays a hearty ease and generosity of spirit -- to his followers, at least, if not to his wife -- that shows he takes himself a lot less seriously than others do.

And Mirren (whose own father was Russian) captures Sofya's commanding presence with imperious ease -- as well as the slightly desperate determination of a to-the-manor-born aristocrat who feels her position, her very reason for being, slipping away in a new and confounding age.

She and her husband have loved -- and tormented -- each other for so long, their lives seem unimaginable without each other.

Just as "The Last Station" would seem unimaginable without Mirren and Plummer, who provide a welcome reminder that great actors in action create special effects no computer-generated imagery could ever hope to approximate.

Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.