Weekend Movie – The Last Station

I want to talk about the Super Bowl a little bit as well as some commercials shown during the game, but I will do that tomorrow. Spread it out a little. This brings me to my weekend movie. My mom asked me yesterday if I wanted to see a movie with her and my grandma and when I asked which movie they were going to see she named a movie I had never heard of and then proceeded to describe it to me. I had absolutely no desire because it was a Laemmle movie, meaning it’s either depressing or super artsy. Don’t get me wrong I freaking love the artsy movies, but the depressing one’s not so much. Well let me tell you, the movie The Last Station is the most depressing movie ever. I have seen some pretty Debbie Downer movies, but I think this one may have topped them.

The movie is about Leo Tolstoy, who is the author of War and Peace and other epic novels. That right there tells you how this movie is going to be. A movie about a Russian author. The Russian’s think that if only one person dies in a movie or play it’s considered a comedy. I read many plays by Chekhov and the comedies only contained one death and contained no comedic relief whatsoever. Those damn dreary Russians. Anyway, the movie portrays the last days of Tolstoy and the writing of his will and the craziness of his wife. Tolstoy works with some people to basically write his wife out of his will and give all of his book rights away. He and his wife hate each other, but are so in love with each other all at the same time. I didn’t understand why he wanted to write her out. She almost doesn’t get to see him before he dies because the people her husband is working with don’t want to give her any say in the will even though she’s his wife. She tries to commit suicide on multiple occasions because of this. Such horrible people. The movie is called The Last Station because Tolstoy leaves his house and his wife in the middle of the night and travels by train to get away. He becomes too ill on the train to continue on and he ends up dying in one of the rooms at the train station. There was a long dying scene and I just wanted to go home. Not a movie I want to fill my weekend with. If I wanted depressing I would just go to work.

Either way, the cast was incredible. Christopher Plummer played Tolstoy and he looked exactly like Dumbledore from Harry Potter. I tried to picture Dumbledore so I wouldn’t cry. Helen Mirren played his wife and James McAvoy plays Valentin who was Tolstoy’s assistant/secretary. The acting was incredible and the movie was actually really good. If you’re in the mood for a depressing movie, than this is your best bet, but if you want to smile, do not, I repeat, do not see this movie. I watched the Super Bowl afterwards to get my mood back up.