Eighty-year old Christopher Plummer plays a powerful role of Russian author Leo Tolstoy with Helen Miren playing his wife Sophia and James McAvoy at Tolstoyan follower and newly appointed secretary. This film was approved by the Tolstoya family and tells the story of the final few months of Tostoy's life, the conflict he faced between loving his family who knew him as a man and caring for his "disciples" who likened him to a prophet.
The movie begins with a quote from Tolstoy, "Everything I know, I know only because I love." After 48 years of marriage, and facing the loss of her husband to men she called conspirators, Sophia is desperately clinging to her husbands hand, begging him to remember his love for her. Watching was heart wrenching, she was not a mad woman at all, but Tolstoy was done fighting with her, done with his life of wealth. He wanted peace and knew no other way to find it but by leaving.
Throughout these scenes of marital strife, their secretary, Valentin, discovers love for himself. He is stuck in the middle of trying to reconcile the two to remember their love for each other, while reconciling the reality of Tolstoy, the man with Tolstoy, the prophet.
All of the actors do a tremendous job of being REAL throughout the film. I think Leo Tolstoy would be pleased.
Can't wait to watch it.
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