The film "The Last Station" was directed by Michael Hoffman and adapted from the novel of the same name by the famous biographical novelist and poet Jay Parrini. year. This gentleman is good at blazing new trails, writing this biographical novel in diary and epistolary style. The plot unfolds in the diaries of different characters, and the descriptions and cognitions of the same thing are often very different. It shows the interpersonal disturbances in Tolstoy's later life in a multi-faceted and three-dimensional manner, and truly reproduces the life of the master before his death. A period of conflicting, troublesome and embarrassing years. In the film, the style of the novel cannot be extended, but rather the perspective of a neutral character, Toon's new secretary, Valentine, is used to show various contradictions.
The young writer Valentin, one of Tolstoy's admirers and followers, was chosen by Tolstoy's close friend and disciple Chekov to serve as Toon's personal secretary, while being asked to watch out for Tolstoy's wife, the Count Mrs. Sophia, whom Chekov describes as an extremely dangerous figure, asks Valentine to closely monitor her every move and report to himself. Sophia lived with her husband for 48 years and bore him 13 children (5 of them died), but she objected to her husband sharing all his property with the commoners out of the protection of the children's rights. In his later years, Tolstoy hated the aristocracy, lived a simple life, and lived and dined like a farmer, while Sophia was still aristocratic, with gorgeous clothes and exquisite food. However, the differences in ideology and lifestyle cannot cover up the warmth and tacit understanding between the couple who have been together for more than 40 years. When they were not arguing about the beliefs that Toon pursued, they were simply a pair of fairy godmothers. When everyone listened excitedly to Toon's speech on the gramophone, she was the only one who decisively changed to a music record, keeping her husband who had left in a turmoil. After a quarrel, she was good at imitating the crowing of a rooster to make her husband turn his anger into joy. At the beginning of the film, Sophia, who wakes up in the morning, tiptoes to the side of her husband's bed, gets into his arms like a little wife, and asks for a little warmth from her husband. Not only that, she is also her husband's creative friend and assistant. She copied the manuscript of "War and Peace" six times, and she also helped to decipher the female dialogue in the novel. Who can say Sophia is not a great woman, she and Valentine's lover Martha together represent a warm and sensual female world. Valentine in the film was repeatedly attracted and guided by the power of women, which made the world he originally believed in and followed finally tilted a little bit.
The opposite of this female world in the film is the Tolstoyists represented by Chekov, Tolstoy's chief disciple - a world dominated by men. With the development of Tolstoy's thought, his followers became more and more, they worshiped Tolstoy, promoted his views, and even established a utopian Tolstoy commune in accordance with Tolstoy's political views, Valentine lived in one of the Tolstoy communes, where he met Martha. An interesting scene is that in the early morning, members of the commune collectively practice Chinese Tai Chi. Here, the director shows that Tolstoy was influenced by the philosophy of Chinese sages headed by Laozi in his later years. Taijiquan is based on the Tao of Laozi and Zhuangzi. Freedom, equality, introspection and abstinence are the tenets of the Tolstoyists, and the members of the commune lived a simple farming life, just like the concept of "pleasant food, beautiful clothes, and peaceful residence" designed by Lao Tzu. , enjoy the custom" an ideal society for a small country with few people. Martha is a particularly offbeat commune member, who seems to be unconstrained by any "ism" and follows her own inner voice. She was moved by Tolstoy's "Confessions" and determined to follow in the footsteps of the great man in his search for freedom, and when she found that the movement had strayed from her own understanding, she decided to quit. She once described her feelings to Valentine this way: "He (Tolstoy) was looking for freedom, and that's what struck me so, love and freedom, that's what I thought. Now they mix everything up together." She also described a member of the Commune: "He's a sad, rigid, conservative old fellow, but yes, he's sincere." Once liberty becomes doctrinal, it begins to shackle liberty. Idols are not for freedom, but for control. In Martha's view, true love and freedom are not dominated by any metaphysical idea, self-respect and understanding, and sincere experience of life. Under her influence, Valentine gradually got rid of the mechanical following of cold doctrines and began to feel the real and warm side of life. After having sex with Martha once, they had the following dialogue:
Martha: You are very happy!
Valentine: Yes, of course. To love and to be loved is the only real thing in the world.
Martha: He said that?
Valentine: Well, Tolstoy did. But now I'm talking. Martha, I'm speaking now, because you made me understand it. Through your eyes I see the future. I think you are the bravest person I have ever met.
In this film, the director seems to lean more towards a female perspective, which reminds me of Marcuse's line: A free society will be a women's society. Compared with the male world, the female world is more humanized, because women maintain their own sensibility and authenticity more. Zhou Guoping said that metaphysical impulses always harass a man, and he is desperately seeking a home for his life. A woman does not seek because she never leaves her home. Eileen Chang said that women tie the wisdom of human beings to fly through space to solid roots.
Tolstoy pursued love and freedom all his life, and in his later years, freedom seemed more and more distant from him. The idol status that was created deviates from his original purpose of equality and fraternity. The lifestyle and beliefs of the landlord's manor do not match him. The disputes between his wife and the believers make him deeply hurt, and the influx of reporters and followers disrupts his life. In the end, he had to choose to run away in order to find relief, and died of pneumonia on the way to an obscure border station. The film brings us closer to the last years of the master than ever before, and it also brings us closer to the predicament that the master faced before his life: the desire for freedom is the fate of human beings; love and faith often cannot coexist; the world of men and the world of women are both Opposing and interdependent. In the end, the most famous monologue from Toon at the beginning of the film echoes in our minds: "Everything I know, it's because of love." Chekov and the other disciples, apparently did not really understand this sentence. As Sophia said: "It's not what they understand, these disciples of my husband, they never understood every word my husband wrote." When a personal belief rises to a certain ism, it deviates It was meant to be a tool for deprivation of liberty.
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