I FEEL that the attitude of people toward me is no longer an attitude toward a man but toward a celebrity, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his dia­ry. “Either compl­ete de­voti­on and confiden­ce, or, on the contrary, repudiation and hatred.” Tolstoy’s harri­ed words, and the ripe melodramas they promise, come to life in The Last Station, a new fi­lm about his turbulent final months before his de­ath ne­arly a century ago.

The Last Station, which opens on December 4 for a week-long Academy aw­ards-qualifying run before a wi­der release in January, pre­sents a retiring Tolstoy eclip­s­ed in his home by his inner circle’s strong opinions and fierce emotions ab­out what he has become. The film, which stars Ch­ristopher Pl­ummer as the count in peasant dress and Helen Mi­rren as his no-ho­lds-barred wife, Sofya, is filtered thro­ugh the experi­ences of an awest­ruck new secretary, Bul­ga­kov (James McAvoy). He’s brought in by Tolstoy’s sche­ming asso­ciate, Chert­kov (Paul Giamatti) — a proto-communist proponent of “Tolstoyan” asceticism who wants the living legend’s works be­queathed to the Ru­­ssian people. The resul­ting conflicts ab­ound with ph­ilosophical and romantic declarations of purpose, and offer the naïve Bulgakov, a­nd everyone else, competing notions on how to live, how to love and how to view the man at the centre of it all.

“It was like a wheel with Tolstoy at the middle, and ev­eryone was living from wh­­­­atever he reflected back to them,” said Hoffman, the director of Restoration and Soapdish, who adapted the sc­reenplay from Jay Pa­rini’s historically based 1990 novel. “The obsession with him was extraordinary and in the end really exhausting.”

No one is, perhaps, mo­re exhausted than Sofya Tolst­oy. In Mirren’s portrayal, So­fya tries ev­erything to ho­ld her husband to his obliga­tions to the family and to th­eir shar­ed past. It’s a ren­dering that acknowled­ges re­cent views of Sofya as Tol­stoy’s partner and collea­gue in artistic endeavo­urs (some of which ha­ve be­en do­cumented in Song Wi­thout Words, a 2007 National Geographic collection of her photographs and writ­ings). But we also see her ov­­er-the-top expl­oits, li­ke spy­ing on Ch­ertkov and Tolstoy.

“Her emotion and her lo­ve for him, that was her only power base,” Mirren said by phone from London, wh­ere she is acting in a new film ad­aptation of Graham Gre­ene’s Brighton Rock, “Th­at is what is so fabulous about th­at character. She ju­st constantly does outrage­ous things, full of real feeling.”

Hoffman recalled the de­adpan inventory given by a crew member early in rehearsals: “The German costumer walked into the room and said to Helen, ‘This is the dress you wear when you fall in from the balcony, and this is the dress you wear when you try to drown yourself in the pond, and this is the dress you wear when you try to make love to your husband, and this is the dress you wear when you break all the plates.’ ”

Between the fiery Sofya and Tolstoy an identifiable portrait of marital tug of war emerges. Tolstoy, the more subdued half, rises to the bait occasionally but ultimately does as he wishes, for better or worse — including an ill-fated nighttime flight from the estate’s imbroglios. For Plummer, the role called for a grounded self-assurance rather than great-man theatrics.

“The hardest thing is to play a genius, and even harder is to write a genius: you just say he’s a genius, and good luck,” Plummer said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he was shooting the film Beginners, with Ewan McGregor.