Director: Michael Hoffman
Year: 2009
Novel by: Jay Parini
Adapted by: Michael Hoffman
Cinematographer: Sebastian Edschmid
I feel that it is rare in cinema for someone to critique a liberal, or even more rare, to portray a character in a sincere pursuit of christianity. For being one of the world's main religions, western cinema seems bound and determined to avoid discussing religion and spiritualism in a serious way, and even here, the film manages to scoot around the motivator of its main character... Tolstoy was a christian who from within the religion, fought through his writings to bring it back to the core teachings of Jesus, he advocated peaceful resistance and rejection of the idea of personal property, and his motivation was a love for God and goodness.
But while the script dances around its ideals and avoids serious discussion of God, spiritualism, religion... it does offer up a very good and interesting look at the tensions between idealism and reality. Specifically, the very common contemporary summation of meaning/spirituality/religion which says "its all about love", "all you need is love" "love is the answer" etc. etc. etc.
For many agree on the statement that love is the key, and Tolstoy is right in saying that love is the core of religion (or ought to be) the reality is that every one of us "love and peace"nics fails miserably at applying the principle of love in our everyday lives, in the very real and tangible relationships with our families and friends, even our spouse.
So the ideological men searching exhaustively for intellectual ways to understand their existence try to purify the christian religion by abandoning the strict doctrines of the organized church by returning to the love and freedom you find in the words of Jesus in the gospels. However, these men delude themselves, they live as hypocrites, not understanding how to love and sacrifice their ideals for the sake of the real, flesh and bone women who love them.
Its built upon very old stereotypes, the women want freedom, to live life, enjoy the physical pleasures of sex and wealth without worrying about the rules, but their selfishness manifests itself as materialistic or shallow... while the men self-righteously and very seriously search for a perfect rigid ideology, a code to live by that will keep them clean and pure and sinless but for all their sincerity, cannot avoid that their selfishness manifests itself as being coldy withdrawn from their loved ones, sacrificing real relationships for intangible ideas. But fortunately, the film goes beyond these stereotypes to deliver complete characters.
The movie succeeds because it lives in the tension, the paradox of these things. Each character being sincere, capable of love and great compassion, but also selfish and close-minded. They live in grey, each one still far from perfect, and most of all, the man regarded as a saint, a prophet, a genius.
A very good story, I felt a personal connection to it, because I see myself in these men... eager to intellectually pursue a way of understanding the world, which, if I abide to, will purify me... and yet despite my self-righteousness, I continually fail to show real love to my loved ones and to live out the ideology I profess. You see in these relationships why people are better off in a relationship than left to their own devices... love and relationship is messy, difficult, full of ups and downs, but those conflicts sharpen us, make us better people because our faults are reigned in by the good side of our partner, and their faults are reigned in by our good side. Two are better than one, but keeping two together is not easy.
I really enjoyed the bits of original russian paparazzi footage of Tolstoy, a very nice touch to anchor the story to reality. Well directed and acted, though nothing really stood out as excellent more than the script. Solid movie.
