Tolstoy biography movie on marilyn washington

Tolstoy biography movie on marilyn washington: * Anna Karenina (

Soapdish and another costume drama, Restoration , both featured Robert Downey, Jr. Hoffman has taken the same approach in his current film. The fine performances by Christopher Plummer Tolstoy , and Helen Mirren Sofya , for which they are both nominated for Oscars, are enjoyable; it is appealing to see faces lined with age albeit very attractively light up with passion for one another.

But otherwise the film is light fare. And Hoffman is right, it is not a film about Tolstoy. The characters and incidents that make up the plot are accurate enough, drawn from the voluminous diaries and letters of the protagonists, as well as several equally voluminous biographies. At this point, Tolstoy is 82 years old, beloved the world over as an author, but also a figure of controversy for his outspoken opposition to private property and his advocacy of agrarian communalism that had a strong appeal among the various radical and populist groups active at the time.

At different points, both parties give the young man a diary with instructions to report on all that he sees so that they can use it against the other. Upon his arrival at the rural commune at Telyatinki, Bulgakov is immediately taken with Masha Kerry Condon , who with her bobbed curls, peasant blouse and trousers is vigorously splitting wood and obviously a liberated young woman.

As the conflict over the will intensifies, Bulgakov, we are meant to believe, is increasingly conflicted in his loyalties, and learns a thing or two about what it really means to be married. In the contest between Tolstoy and Sofya, Mirren steals the show with her histrionics—threatening to throw herself under the train like Anna Karenina, and into the lake to drown both true.

Who was Leo Tolstoy that he should be considered if not the , then at least among the greatest writers to ever have lived?