Kingdoms in Conflict

Leo Tolstoy said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

He wasn’t the first to say it.

After penning what many believe to be two of the best novels ever written (“Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace”), he spent his later life studying and writing about the Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ teachings, encapsulated in the “Sermon on the Mount,” became the foundation upon which Tolstoy attempted to build his life and legacy.

The Kingdom of God is within—not without. Not of institutions or empires, church or state, but of love.

It is not only opposite the world, but opposed to it—standing as an alternative, a current that is counter to culture and creed, dynasties and domination systems.

As such, the Kingdom of God functions differently than the Kingdom of the world. Those who live by it trust, share what they have, love everyone—even enemies—refuse to retaliate, fight greed and hate, inequality, and injustice. In stark contrast, the world, fueled by selfishness and greed, in largely controlled by money and power, manipulation and physical force, oppression and brutality, most often putting the might of the majority in power over the rights of the multitudes.

The kingdom that’s within rejects power, refuses to use physical force. Built on compassion and justice, it operates in freedom and love—which are virtually the same thing—making a priority of helping the poor, the oppressed, the least, the lowest, the marginalized, and disenfranchised.

In Tolstoy’s antiestablishment and antiauthoritarian “The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystical Religion but as a New Theory of Life,” he argues that all societies contain social systems of wealth and power based on the inequitable distribution of wealth where, even as governments and ideologies change, domination systems use the threat of force to protect institutional inequality. The powerful maintain their power because of systemic oppression, and under the threat of force and the allure of material desire, individuals committed to maintaining the status quo are actually instruments of their own domination.

Power corrupts.

Like the Roman Empire Jesus challenged or the Russian Empire Tolstoy railed against, our culture is corrupt. Greed has led to a domination system that, through brainwashing of state and church and family, leads most of us to walk around in a hypnotic state, faithful cogs in the very machine that oppresses us.

But as evil as injustice, inequity, oppression, and domination are, Tolstoy, like Gandhi and MLK, follow Jesus in his insistence that force can never be a part of the Kingdom of God, and strictly adheres to Jesus’ prohibition of responding to evil with evil. Freedom is love is right. Force is evil is wrong.

Tolstoy’s radical commitment to Jesus’ teaching, particularly his insistence on nonviolence and ending greed by the sharing of one’s possessions, led him to reject the ownership of private property and to sign away his copyrights to his works, which in turn caused an epic battle with his wife—the last year of which is dramatized in Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station.”

After almost fifty years of marriage, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), Leo Tolstoy’s (Christopher Plummer) devoted wife, passionate lover, muse and secretary—she’s copied out War and Peace six times…by hand!—suddenly finds her entire world turned upside down. In the name of his newly created religion, the great Russian novelist has renounced his noble title, his property and even his family in favor of poverty, vegetarianism and even celibacy—after she’s born him thirteen children!

When Sofya then discovers that Tolstoy’s trusted disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti)—whom she despises—may have secretly convinced her husband to sign a new will, leaving the rights to his iconic novels to the Russian people rather than his own family, she is consumed by righteous outrage. This is the last straw. Using every bit of cunning, every trick of seduction in her considerable arsenal, she fights fiercely for what she believes is rightfully hers. The more extreme her behavior becomes, however, the more easily Chertkov is able to persuade Tolstoy of the damage she will do to his glorious legacy.

Into this minefield wanders Tolstoy’s worshipful new assistant, the young, gullible Valentin (James McAvoy). In no time, he becomes a pawn, first of the scheming Chertkov and then of the wounded, vengeful Sofya as each plots to undermine the other’s gains. Complicating Valentin’s life even further is the overwhelming passion he feels for the beautiful, spirited Masha (Kerry Condon), a free thinking adherent of Tolstoy’s new religion whose unconventional attitudes about sex and love both compel and confuse him. Infatuated with Tolstoy’s notions of ideal love, but mystified by the Tolstoys’ rich and turbulent marriage, Valentin is ill equipped to deal with the complications of love in the real world.

A tale of two romances, one beginning, one near its end, “The Last Station” is a complex, funny, rich and emotional story about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it.

Kingdoms come into conflict in “The Last Station”—inside Tolstoy as much as without. Any attempt to live in allegiance to the kingdom within will inevitably lead to conflicts with other kingdoms—without and within.

Hoffman has made an exquisite film of relationships and rhetoric, of love—love of people, love of principles. It’s the story of spirit and flesh, of noble ideals and small-souled self-interest, all swirling around a gifted writer and thinker, a man attempting to live according to his convictions—no matter the cost.

Every element of the film works, but the directing and acting—particularly Plummer, Mirren, and Giamatti—are stunning.

Though only covering the last year of his life, “The Last Station” gives us a fascinating glimpse at Tolstoy and his struggles to follow Jesus.

Like Tolstoy, I attempt (and continually fail) to follow the true, simple, profound teachings of Jesus, to live according to the kingdom within, and, like him, this leads me to reject cultural status quo and the roles church and state, money and power, play in the domination system. I part company with him when it comes to celibacy, but he did, too, until late in life. Perhaps I’ll feel differently in my eighties (though I sincerely hope not). I also think there are ways to integrate the radical teachings of love and freedom, of nonattachment and nonviolence, in everyday life, to be countercultural within one’s own culture—as opposed to removing oneself completely from culture.

I recommend in addition to watching “The Last Station,” you also read “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” and in the process, search yourself, as Tolstoy did, for the Kingdom of God inside you.