There Goes Your Man

Last night was a bit of a rough one for me -- and not really for any huge reason I can name. I talked to my man about how I was feeling, and that helped as much as it could without him being physically present. After we hung up, I decided to make myself some food and see if I could make a dent in the mountain of housework that has been piling up around me for the last week (or two). To entertain myself while I worked, I checked out the Watch Instantly selections on Netflix and picked The Last Station, a movie about Tolstoy. I'd wanted to see it in the theaters but hadn't, and it seemed like it might match my mood. That it did.

It begins with one of his famous quotes from War and Peace:

Everything I know, I know only because I love.

And the movie captured that truth over and over again. Tolstoy's followers, particularly Chertkov, tried over and over again to get him to leave his wife and change his will. And they were eventually successful -- sort of.

The music in the movie is all instrumental, but ipod shuffle came through with this plaintive little song that seems as if it was written for the soundtrack.

Because he does finally leave her, but not without obvious inner conflict:

There goes your man

There goes your man

He's walking by, and shaking like a leaf

There goes your man

And it just about kills his wife when he does. She does in fact try to kill herself, but is unsuccessful. And it's a damn good thing she didn't go that way, because on his deathbed, he calls out for her. When she comes to his side, she begs his forgiveness (she wasn't quiet over the years about her dislike of Chertkov or how their work took so much away from their lives together), and he has a moment of lucidity that makes it crystal clear to her and to his followers that no idea, no movement, could ever be as strong a force as love:

Come now, you widow

Come now, you widow

Come and rest, so quiet in the meadow

There comes your man

And that, my friends, I find incredibly reassuring.