The countess isn’t even the central character of “The Last Station,’’ which has been robustly adapted by writer-director Michael Hoffman from Jay Parini’s 1990 novel about the Russian author’s final months. The movie’s a chocolate box of nougaty performances, from Christopher Plummer’s delightful depiction of Tolstoy as a ribald old naïf to Paul Giamatti twirling his waxed mustache and playing to the gallery as Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s secretary and rival with the countess for the great man’s legacy.
In the middle - literally, since each side asks him to spy on the other - is James McAvoy as the young and ardent Valentin Bulgakov, hired as the writer’s secretary when Chertkov is put under house arrest by the czar’s police. McAvoy has played too many of these weak-kneed neophytes before, but “The Last Station’’ gives him more than usual to chew on, and the character gratifyingly grows in inner strength and outer confidence. Bulgakov (like the others, an actual historical figure) is a witness to history but he’s not a sap.
The movie explores the chaotic time period just before World War I when Russia was roiling with visionaries and crackpots. With his published calls for universal peace, chastity, women’s freedom, and the abolishment of private property, the 82-year-old Tolstoy was the most famous of the nation’s utopians, with communes full of devoted “Tolstoyans’’ hanging on his every word. “I don’t think he’s Christ,’’ says Tolstoy’s doctor (John Sessions), who jots everything he sees into a little notebook for posterity. “Christ is Christ. I do believe he’s a prophet, though.’’
