ALONE among great writers, Leo Tolstoy was born into the highest social class. The author of War and Peace was a Russian count, an aristocrat, a privileged citizen in 19th-century society.

　　 By the end of his life he was a confirmed anarchist, a trenchant critic of the Russian government and a heretic in the eyes of his church, revered as a novelist but equally famous as a moralist, mystic and aesthetic philosopher.

　　 Michael Hoffman's beautiful film The Last Station is a moving account of his last years. At its heart is a majestic performance by Christopher Plummer, who gives us a figure of Lear-like dignity and derangement (though Tolstoy, who detested Shakespeare, would have deplored the comparison).

　　 Most of those last years were spent at his country estate, Yasnaya Polyana, the scene of much domestic rancour and endless plotting among the strange cult of worshippers that sprang up around him. The Tolstoyans, as they came to be known, practised an odd blend of pacifism, vegetarianism and celibacy, along with a form of Christian observance that owed more to the American Quakers than Russian Orthodoxy.

　　 . Wilson, in his magnificent biography of Tolstoy, wrote that his latter years were so "scandalously horrible -- and all the chief actors in the drama behaved so badly -- that it was hard not to be gripped by it". And this, surely, is true.

　　 The historical details are well attested. There were endless distressing scenes between the old man and his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren), whom he came to despise, though she had given him 13 children and never ceased to love him.

　　 Tolstoy's favourite daughter, Sasha (Anne-Marie Duff), was another loyal comforter in old age (although Tolstoy, like Lear, treated all his children badly). But the film is most fascinating for its insights into the motives of Tolstoy's inner circle,（英文影评） which includes Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), his scheming confidant and leader of the loony Tolstoyan movement.

　　 Chertkov was determined to deny Sofya any royalties in Tolstoy's work and persuaded him to alter his will accordingly. His chosen ally (and spy) was an idealistic young Tolstoyan, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), who became the great man's secretary. In the film, Bulgakov keeps a secret diary of his master's movements and reports regularly to Chertkov in Moscow.

　　 Despite all the bitterness and skulduggery, The Last Station is surprisingly warm and spirited in tone.

　　 The mood is much lightened by a tender romance between Bulgakov and Masha, a pretty farm girl (Kerry Condon), who persuades the young disciple, against all his conscientious beliefs, to surrender his virginity. This is not difficult, and I suspect this aspect of the story owes much to Jay Parini's novel, the basis of Hoffman's screenplay.

　　 The mood is further lightened by Sebastian Edschmid's lush cinematography and the beautiful production design of Patrizia von Brandenstein. (The film was shot in Germany -- it is strictly a Russian-German co-production -- with English dialogue.)

　　 I enjoyed the emphasis on the latest technological marvels: gramophones, ticker-tape machines and hand-turned movie cameras. Those cameras have a lot to tell us. Tolstoy may have been the world's first international celebrity, his death meriting round-the-clock media attention. When the domestic bitterness and in-fighting at Yasnaya Polyana became too much for him, he set off by train for a secret destination and died, on November 7, 1910, at a railway station on the way.

　　 Reporters and photographers set up camp to hear the latest medical bulletins.

　　 Wilson in his biography recounts how Charles Pathe, inventor of the cinema newsreel, cabled explicit instructions to his cameraman covering the scene: "Take station, try to get close-up [of] station name, take family, well-known figures, car they are sleeping in."

　　 All this was faithfully done, and Hoffman seems to have followed the very same instructions. (Pathe's news film, incidentally, still survives.)

　　 With its extremes of ranting and tenderness, passion and despair, Plummer's performance is among the best things he has done. The comparison with Lear is unmistakable. George Orwell, in a famous essay, berated Tolstoy for his obsessive deconstruction of Lear's speech and behaviour. As Orwell saw it, Tolstoy himself was Lear, blind to the folly of giving away his possessions and disinheriting his family, another white-bearded, half-mad old man stumbling towards the darkness. One feels pity for both of them.