Christopher Plummer in Michael Hoffman's The Last Station
Taking The Last Station with Michael Hoffman
By John Esther
Over a decade in the making, writer-director Michael Hoffman is taking audiences to The Last Station. Based on the novel by Jay Parini, The Last Station recounts the relationship between the great writer, Count Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife/muse/collaborator of 48 years, Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), during the last year of his life.
Tormented by his newfound and confounded new religion to essentially leave his materialist nothing upon his death, Sofya torments the great, Russian writer (War & Peace; The Death of Ivan Ilych) with bourgeois tantrums. Torn between his principles and the prodding of his most devoted disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), and the grand love (and lust) for his wife, Leo cannot continue to live the life he has had nor let it go.
Clearly not a typical biopic from the director of such films as One Fine Day, Restoration and Game 6, Hoffman summoned his own experiences of marriage to his wife, Samantha Silva, to finally bring the picture to life.
Born in Hawaii, raised in rural Idaho and educated at Boise State University, Oxford University and Oriel College, we recently caught up with Hoffman.
JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film?
Michael Hoffman: Well, I don’t know. When I first read the novel I didn’t really see what the film was. It took me a second reading 14 years later to see the movie in it and I think it was because I was married 12 of intervening 14 years. I guess I wanted to make a movie about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it. When I see some of the shit that goes on in my marriage; it’s so absurd the way we get in our own way. It’s kind of amazing to see this self-proclaimed prophet of love, a person everybody looks up to as a living saint, a saint of love unable to sort things out in his own life, in his own bedroom.
JE: Then there is the negotiation between artistic integrity and materialistic comfort.
MH: Absolutely. You have to deal with the gap between the claims of the ideal and the claims of experience. You have to somehow learn to love or work in the real world. And you’ve got all these material constraints – the most of which is your body.
JE: Speaking of work, what do you think of Tolstoy’s work? In what ways has it influenced you?
MH: I don’t know if Tolstoy’s work has been a big influence on me. Tolstoy, I would say, is fundamentally a psychological novelist and he’s interested in the psychology of his characters. He has a remarkable gift reprising things within himself that also ring true, but it was really [Anton] Chekhov who I’ve always been obsessed by and who was key to finding the tone in this movie.
JE: Did you feel uncomfortable making the film in English, since that is not what they spoke as a first language?
MH: So someone will see it. [Laughs]. That’s the way for this film to reach the largest audience. It’s challenging in Russia because the Russians have an ingrained anxiety with foreigners telling their stories. And maybe we would, too. Maybe we would think “The Russian Ben Franklin Movie” was weird. [Laughs]. For Russia we are going to dub the film rather than keep it in English with Russian subtitles. We have a great distribution in Russia.
JE: Lastly, what do you think about interviews where you discuss your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?
MH: I’m probably political enough that it’s important to try to position a film, this film particularly. It’s important that people go into it knowing a couple of things. One, there’s humor in it – and it’s intentional [Laughs]. Two, it’s a movie about love; it’s not a biopic about Tolstoy. If an audience goes into it knowing that and they still don’t like it, then fair enough. But if they go into it looking for a different movie, then that’s a little frustrating.
Taking The Last Station with Michael Hoffman
By John Esther
Over a decade in the making, writer-director Michael Hoffman is taking audiences to The Last Station. Based on the novel by Jay Parini, The Last Station recounts the relationship between the great writer, Count Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife/muse/collaborator of 48 years, Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), during the last year of his life.
Tormented by his newfound and confounded new religion to essentially leave his materialist nothing upon his death, Sofya torments the great, Russian writer (War & Peace; The Death of Ivan Ilych) with bourgeois tantrums. Torn between his principles and the prodding of his most devoted disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), and the grand love (and lust) for his wife, Leo cannot continue to live the life he has had nor let it go.
Clearly not a typical biopic from the director of such films as One Fine Day, Restoration and Game 6, Hoffman summoned his own experiences of marriage to his wife, Samantha Silva, to finally bring the picture to life.
Born in Hawaii, raised in rural Idaho and educated at Boise State University, Oxford University and Oriel College, we recently caught up with Hoffman.
JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film?
Michael Hoffman: Well, I don’t know. When I first read the novel I didn’t really see what the film was. It took me a second reading 14 years later to see the movie in it and I think it was because I was married 12 of intervening 14 years. I guess I wanted to make a movie about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it. When I see some of the shit that goes on in my marriage; it’s so absurd the way we get in our own way. It’s kind of amazing to see this self-proclaimed prophet of love, a person everybody looks up to as a living saint, a saint of love unable to sort things out in his own life, in his own bedroom.
JE: Then there is the negotiation between artistic integrity and materialistic comfort.
MH: Absolutely. You have to deal with the gap between the claims of the ideal and the claims of experience. You have to somehow learn to love or work in the real world. And you’ve got all these material constraints – the most of which is your body.
JE: Speaking of work, what do you think of Tolstoy’s work? In what ways has it influenced you?
MH: I don’t know if Tolstoy’s work has been a big influence on me. Tolstoy, I would say, is fundamentally a psychological novelist and he’s interested in the psychology of his characters. He has a remarkable gift reprising things within himself that also ring true, but it was really [Anton] Chekhov who I’ve always been obsessed by and who was key to finding the tone in this movie.
JE: Did you feel uncomfortable making the film in English, since that is not what they spoke as a first language?
MH: So someone will see it. [Laughs]. That’s the way for this film to reach the largest audience. It’s challenging in Russia because the Russians have an ingrained anxiety with foreigners telling their stories. And maybe we would, too. Maybe we would think “The Russian Ben Franklin Movie” was weird. [Laughs]. For Russia we are going to dub the film rather than keep it in English with Russian subtitles. We have a great distribution in Russia.
JE: Lastly, what do you think about interviews where you discuss your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?
MH: I’m probably political enough that it’s important to try to position a film, this film particularly. It’s important that people go into it knowing a couple of things. One, there’s humor in it – and it’s intentional [Laughs]. Two, it’s a movie about love; it’s not a biopic about Tolstoy. If an audience goes into it knowing that and they still don’t like it, then fair enough. But if they go into it looking for a different movie, then that’s a little frustrating.
