Having become hugely famous from writing his big novels, and having added considerably to his aristocrat’s wealth, the ageing Count Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) started to have some rather wacky ideas. Well, this was the last decade of the Romanov dynasty and big change was in the air. Tolstoy, now wearing peasant costume, and followed constantly by the paparazzi of the day, favoured a kind of egalitarian non-materialism and what he called passive resistance. His adherents, led by the creepy Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti, excellent), were the Tolstoyans, and their beliefs were put into effect at a sort of chaste Christian-hippy commune some distance from the Count’s country estate.

This is the world depicted in Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, based on Jay Parini’s novel, and there is much of interest for those not well acquainted with the end of the great man’s life. The main drama comes from the battles he fought with the Countess Sofia (Helen Mirren – she does do important wives very well), who rejects all the new-fangled nonsense and is fearful that Leo will bequeath his royalties to the Russian people instead of his family. We witness most of this through young and idealistic Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy, very effective), hired as a private secretary.

Interesting then, but a little uncertain in tone. The film comes over more as a series of domestic squabbles than as a great battle of ideas, and what is lacking is a more comprehensive depiction of the contemporary political milieu which would have put the arguments into sharper focus. And the fact that Bulgakov changes his allegiance after losing his cherry to the lovely Masha suggests that his beliefs were not too deeply held to start with.

We follow Tolstoy, still wrestling with the conflict thrown up by his own ideas, and his entourage, south to a remote railway station, followed by the still-histrionic Sofia, and there await the end. Production design is good; the score somewhat intrusive. And a footnote: the Tolstoyans survived well into the Soviet era, only to be stamped out by Stalin.