I finally saw a rented DVD of the much bally-hooed film "The Last Station" this weekend, about the events surrounding the death of Lev Tolstoy. The film garnered several nominations at this year's Academy Awards, and featured dramatic cinematography of the sets for Yasnaya Polyana, along with highly acclaimed performances by Dame Helen Mirren (aka Mironov) as Sofia Andreevna and Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy.
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But, what a colossal disappointment! I am, frankly, amazed that a screenwriter (and novelist) could write such a blatantly unhistorical account of a writer's demise, and be called to task by no one in the modern media! There was not a single reference in the film to Optina Monastery, or to Tolstoy's visit to Optina and Shamordino (where his sister was a nun) during the days prior to his death. The screenwriter would have us believe that Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana at the end of his life primarily because of the constant hen-pecking by his histrionic wife-- who was, understandably irritated with his narcissism and constant posing for the cameras and crowds of Tolstoyan admirers. (There was one highly amusing comment by Chistopher Plummer in the film after one of his wife's drama scenes; "My dear, you don't need a husband. You need a Greek Chorus.")
Most importantly, there was no mention at all of the fact that Tolstoy was travelling to Optina at the time of his death! In the screenplay, he talks about seeking "spiritual solitude" of some vague kind-- leaving me wondering why he did not, then, choose to retire to his nearby, New Age Tolstoyan commune of Telyatikhi! There was also no mention whatsoever of the fact that Tolstoy had specifically asked Elder Sebastian of Optina to visit him while he was dying, or to the fact that the gracious Elder was not even permitted to talk to Tolstoy by after he arrived at the train station-- through the machinations of Chertkov and other Tolstoyans, who feared that Tolstoy would renounce his heretical, blasphemous nonsense and be reconciled with the Orthodox Church prior to his repose!
Instead, the only references to the Orthodox Church in the entire film were vague comments about the Okhrana and the Church constantly "hounding" the saintlike guru, Tolstoy, and an "unctious" priest waiting to visit Tolstoy at the train station at the behest of his wife! The priest in the final scene of the film-- who bore a slight resemblance to Elder Sebastian-- was shown with Sofia Andreevna, sleeping lazily on a bench at the train station.
In short, this film is perfectly suited for America's post-Protestant, New Age viewers-- the historical successors of the deluded Tolstoyans of the last century. As always, the nature and history of Orthodox Christianity remains a completely irrelevant, oppressive secret, even in the biography of Lev Tolstoy! And our contemporary post-Protestant New Agers get to admire another deluded, narcissist like themselves-- one who taught that all religions share a common interest in "love," (?huh?) while dressing in peasant garb and posing for the cameras as a Christ-like figure who condescends to accept sunflowers from the children of his serfs.
Tolstoy's own apostasy is less forgiveable than that of our modern New Agers. As a man who was raised from his youth in the Russian Orthodox Church, he, of all people, should have known better than to make a late-life career of utter self-serving blasphemy...