I may personally have a bit more appreciation/interest for Leo Tolstoy than the next person.  As both an undergrad and graduate literature major, Tolstoy is kinda, well... a BIG deal to me.  That being said, this historical drama has the ability to tell both a love story and political story that will capture the interest of someone who has never even heard of this famous Russian writer. 

The Last Station centers on Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) later years, the years after he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina...  The film starts and ends with the turbulent love and passion between him and his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren).  She tells the story of a their relationship when she was young and he much older, the way they met, the romance they shared, the way she actually helped him write his timeless masterpieces by giving him a woman's point of view.  Unfortunately, in his later years, their political and financial views began to differ.  Leo Tolstoy has a new assistant, Valentin (James McAvoy) who arrives on scene just as most of these disagreements seem to reach their boiling point.  Tolstoy has taken both a political and financial approach of "less is more".  He has started the process of renouncing his financial wealth and does not want to be seen as the celebrity that he has become on both the literary and political scenes.  He has even decided to give all the rights and future monies earned on his literary works to the Pacifist movement he has started (leaving his wife and family cut out of the will).  Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) is the man responsible for running the organization while Tolstoy is home and will be responsible for it after Tolstoy's death.  This creates dissention between Sofya and Chertkov and puts Valentin in the middle.  Valentin is torn between his own loyalties between Sofya (whom he knows loves Tolstoy) and Chertkov.  The relationship between Tolstoy and his beloved Sofya begins to disintegrate.  Even their daughter decides to side with Chertkov and goes against her mother.  The raging arguments, deceitful meetings and secrets finally become too much and Tolstoy decides to leave Sofya and take up resident with his followers. 

I'm not sure you can go wrong when a film has leading roles portrayed by Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti.  I was most fascinated my Mirren's portrayal of Tolstoy's wife.  She was sometimes giddy like a school girl, in the next minute passionate about their love life and then other times she acted mentally unbalanced.  McAvoy's portrayal of Tolstoy's secretary allowed us to see the situation through his eyes - a more unbiased view... But after it was all said and done, I didn't leave the film thinking about the great literary works of Tolstoy... or his interpretation of the pacifist/anarchist movement.  I wasn't even thinking of the man that I had studied so many times in school.  The film was a complicated yet true love story between 2 people that had the ability to weather the most uncertain times.