The Last Station

Helen Mirren gave an amazing performance in this movie.

I nearly cried by the end.

An awesome cast: James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff, Paul Giamatti, and, of course, Christopher Plummer

The movie itself is about the last part of Tolstoy's life: when he created his own sect, Tolstoyan. The film starts out with a series of bold claims about how amazing Tolstoy is, but the movie is good enough to make up for a few flaws.

"The Last Station" fails to mention to the audience, however, that Tolstoyan is actually a sect of Christianity, and that Tolstoy based his teachings largely on the Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel in general. Perhaps we're meant to infer this from the specific references to Christ and the basis of the religion in "freedom and love," but I felt vaguely as if the entire audience had been mislead. Tolstoy didn't create his own new religion, he took the principles he found in the Sermon on the Mount and founded a new way of living to glorify God in the best way he knew how. Whyever would director Michael Hoffman leave this out?

Either way, love that hat.