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By Collin, on August 27th, 2010

The Last Station

The Last Station might be poorlyreceived by many. This is because most people have never heard of Leo Tolstoy, and if they have, they know him from his exhaustively lengthy masterworks Anna Karenina and War and Peace.

Both are widely-considered among the best novels ever written. I wouldn’t expect many to read through either before they die, but they should. I often think of them as wonders of the world, except you have to read them, not just show up. They’re tough, but incredibly gratifying reads. I insist to everyone that the greatest art is not instantly accessible, but must be worked at, revisited, and reanalyzed. Transformers is fast-food art, that doesn’t make it bad, just different. I love a double-cheese burger.

Tolstoy is also famous for his exchanges between Gandhi. His passive-resistance philosophy had a powerful influence on Gandhi. So, possibly, much of our own civil rights movement was influence vicariously by Tolstoy.

Moreover, The Last Station is a cool little movie about Tolstoy and his final days. Tolstoy became disillusioned as he got older, writing A Confession which outlined his anxieties about life, death, love, past transgressions, religion, even the rejection of his own writing. The book is even a bit influential on even me (the opening of my latest screenplay is a passage from the text). It is this time in Tolstoy’s life that director Michael Hoffman puts under a microscope.

The film takes place in a commune based on the ideals of Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), a sort of religion had sprung from the The Confession and other late-writings, followers of which became known as Tolstoyians. Much of the conflict in the film arises from the back-and-forth between Tolstoy and his wife Sophia (Helen Mirren). Tolstoy, feeling shamed from his aristocratic background and further from the fact that many labor and he does not, wishes to put his writings into the public domain. A parallel story exists between Tolstoy’s secretary Valentin (James McAvoy) and Masha (Kerry Condon) as they explore the truths that Tolstoyian philosophy brings. The “bad-guy” is Paul Giamatti’s character Vladimir Chertkov, who asks as a Worm-Tongue in Tolstoy’s ear. Insisting he give away his works and, therefore, his fortune.

Much of the plot is meaningless. I hate to call the copyright/will thing a Mcguffin, but it is. Who really cares if the copyrights are given away? I don’t. I’m sure you don’t either. I think this might be why the film isn’t great, but just good and fun. The tone is also off too. A running gag in the film is the McAvoy’s character can’t help but sneeze when he is nervous. A gag that would be cheesy on Hanna Montanana, let alone a period drama. I realize that they were trying to add a fun and light-hearted feel to the movie, but other options could have been explored more. For example, Vladimir storms out of the room furious with Tolstoy’s wife and drops the hilarious line, “If I had a wife like yours, I would blow my brains out!……. Or go to America!”.

The one-on-one conversations between Tolstoy and all the other characters are the highlights of the movie. Take one exchange between Tolstoy and his secretary Valetin, where Tolstoy wonders out loud about the value of a sexual relationship with a girl he had when he was young. He discusses the frequency and passion of the sex and if there was any meaning to their love. This conversation exemplifies why Tolstoy is a great writer and why he is still relevant today. How many times have you wondered if a past relationship has had meaning? So many relationships end poorly with divorce, break-up, heartache, and infidelity. Anna Karenina, if nothing else, is an exploration of love, meaning, and primal-lust in relationships.

Another great moment is the sex and subsequent pillow-talk between Valetin and Masha. One of Tolstoy’s principles was celibacy, which many Tolstoyians practiced. Not Masha apparently, who seduces Valetin easily. Too many movies make sex scenes passionate and romantic. This movie makes it funny and awkward which sex for the first time with a person often is. This strips away the pornographic, exploitative element of a sex scene and adds humanism to it. Their relationship and rejection of Tolstoyianism might have something more provocative to say about organized religion, but I’m not going to guess.

With a stronger plot, or a looser, more vignettey one, like Andrei Rublev, The Last Station could have been great. But instead, we get a comedy-of-sorts about a great writer. A writer who is widely recognized as the greatest novelist of all time. Is he still too enigmatic and saintly? Hell yeah, but it is still fun to pretend.

January 2010

I say: B

You’ll say: C+

By Collin, on August 12th, 2010

Inception

I’d thrown together a discussion about the movie right after I’d seen it. Only one problem: everyone on the internet did too. Even people who don’t talk about movies. So I decided to just let things cool for a while, come back to the review, and then write a few things in a simple format.

Pros:

1. The film is definitely cool looking if nothing else. Nolan is a god of special effects that look like they’re “real”. Even Cameron’s Avatar and Jackson’s King Kong are guilty of looking like they don’t take place in the same space and time as their subjects. Nolan is grueling in his love of organic effects. Take the hallway/hotel room gravity scenes. When I originally saw the trailer for the scenes I was annoyed. How did he do it? I came to the conclusion that Nolan built big, fake sets and spun them like a top with actors inside. And so he did. Granted much is done with computer generated images, but to a different degree. Things don’t look synthetic. Or should I say, too synthetic.

2. Slowly science-fiction is being molded into the mainstream. This isn’t a thing I care much about. I have always been pro-science fiction and fantasy. I read Wizards First Rule and Sphere before I was ten. I even know what a Shrike is. But my point is Avatar and Inception don’t seem like fiction people would get invested in. Then why do they? I’m not sure. The love story and special effects in Avatar went well with most people. But why Inception? It is hard-core, nonsensical science-fiction. It is like a Philip K. Dick novel rolled into a Michael Bay film. Maybe it is the Bay part that people love? I think it comes from the very humanizing story of loss that is devastating in DiCaprio’s story.

Cons:

1. The story of loss could have been better and more devastating. Nolan was forced to pack in the action wall-to-wall. This isn’t a problem. The film had to be exciting for everyone. A film that was more psychological, Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind, was more devastating in its approach toward loss, memory, love, and dreams. I don’t think Inception will ever be essential. Maybe great, but never essential. I always base essential movies on the fact if I had twenty movies to be shot into space with, what movies I’d take with me. I don’t know if Inception will be one of them. Nolan could have spent more time on these ideas, but he wasn’t making a five hour melodrama. He was making a blockbuster. One isn’t better than the other, they’re just different.

Instead, I still imagine a version where Nolan scaled down the action and went a more terrifying approach. What would it be like if you could really actively approached dead or alive loved ones in your dreams? There are infinite ideas to be approached here. Anyone who takes issue with the film were probably fantasizing about these questions as well. There were inevitable discussions about how Kubrick or Charlie Kaufman would have approached these ideas. Maybe better, but would it have been seen? But then again, if Nolan had gone a more psychological route, it could have been long, boring, and make you want to put a pistol in your mouth at the end. For such a film, check out either version of Solaris.

2. A film like this gets over-analyzed. I walked away from the film pretty clear headed. Not because I understood the film up and down. But I knew there was really not much to get. It isn’t a film you understand because it is complete nonsense. It is visceral, not intellectual. Much of the film’s psychological and technological approach is fiction. The only thing to understand is what Nolan gives us, which is his own laws of the universe. Not ours. If anything, it is the films greatest asset that he makes people believe what they’re seeing makes sense and relate it to reality. If the dream sequences were a computer game I don’ t think people would be arguing about it as much. It didn’t help that Nolan through up an open-ending.

Released: Summer 2010

Collin says: A

You’ll say: A