Long before there was Paris Hilton or Linsday Lohan or Madonna or Michael Jackson, there was Leo Tolstoy, the rock star of Russian literature whose life and death was more important than anything he actually wrote. At least that’s the case being made in Michael Hoffman’s delightful new movie, The Last Station. The movie follows the aging Russian author as he struggles to define the legacy he will leave behind when he passes on. Will his beloved books be enough? Should the fledgling social movement based on people’s interpretations of those works be his greatest achievement? Should he leave nothing behind, because his quasi-socialistic philosophy demands he not, or should he take full ownership of the wealth and fame he has gained over the years to leave an inheritance for his family? It may all sound a bit dry and philosophical, like a tedious PBS docudrama, but Hoffman, who also wrote the script, fills the film with humor and humanity, bringing the meticulously researched history of the man, and his myth, to joyous life on the screen.
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