In 1990, Michael Hoffman read Jay Parini's novel "The Last Station," about the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, but he set it aside.

A seasoned director most known for his films "Soapdish" and "Restoration," he couldn't see a movie in its pages.

Reading it again in 2004, he saw it immediately.

"The only substantive thing in my life that had changed," Hoffman said, "was I'd been married for 10 years."

Hoffman's most recent writing and directorial effort could be seen as your basic biopic about the life of the great Russian writer.

Actually, it's a movie about love and marriage.

"Not the difficulty of living with love, but the impossibility of living without love," Hoffman said. "It's a tragi-comedy about all these great, deep relationships that make us, and destroy us, and make us, and destroy us. Eventually they become a crucible that forms us."

It is in many ways a love letter to his wife, screenwriter Samantha Silva, and about their life together.

"It's ironic and a bit funny. I call it art imitates wife," Silva said. Hoffman often quotes Silva's line when he talks about the film.

"It usually gets a big laugh," she said.

That's how audiences have connected with the movie since it began its slow roll into American theaters in December. As it moves into wider distribution this week, Hoffman, who makes his home in Boise, will appear at a premiere and post-screening reception on Thursday. It opens Friday at the Flicks.

Hoffman began work on "The Last Station" in 2004. He wrote the script sitting in Bar Gernika in Boise and a Starbucks in New York City.

He went the indie route to make this film. He found the financing in Germany and put his career mostly on hold for nearly five years while the wheels turned slowly. (He did squeeze in "Game 6" in 2006 with Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr., and the documentary "Out of the Blue" about Boise State's Fiesta Bowl season in 2007, between trips to Russia to meet with Tolstoy's family.)

Hoffman filmed in Germany in 2008, finishing the post-production work in London, where he and his family lived for a year.

It wasn't until the film was finished that he realized how much his marriage to Silva had influenced its making.

The film is gathering glowing praise and awards. Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren star as Tolstoy and his wife, Sofya, in what turns out to be their last year together. Both actors received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for their performances. (Hoffman and Silva will attend the Oscars on March 7.)

The film also received five Spirit Award nominations - the Oscars of independent film - including best screenplay and director for Hoffman. Those will be handed out March 5 in Los Angeles.

The film's success has sent Hoffman traveling the world.

FROM BOISE TO BRITAIN

Born in Hawaii, Hoffman grew up in Payette. He majored in theater at Boise State University, worked in community theater and co-founded the Idaho Shakespeare Festival in 1977. Hoffman played Lysander in the first Shakespeare Festival production, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," at the Main Street Bistro.

He became BSU's first Rhodes scholar in 1979. He went to Oxford University to read English literature at Oriel College. That experience turned his creative attention to film.

He fell in with the acting, filmmaking crowd that included Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, who were both in Hoffman's first film, "Privileged." He spent the next 10 years living in England and making movies.

Silva had moved to Boise from Chicago with her family when she was 14. Her dad, Mike, had been a reporter for Life magazine and took a job at Boise Cascade to settle the family in one place.

Hoffman and Silva knew of each other. They had a few classes together at BSU; he dated one of her sisters and acted with Silva's father in "That Championship Season" at Boise Little Theater. But they didn't really meet until later.

It was December 1988 at the Koffee Klatsch, a now-defunct 8th Street coffeehouse where Casa del Sol in BoDo is today. He was having coffee with his sister; she was there with a friend.

"Sam walked up with our friend Stacy Ericson, and I looked in her eyes and had my love-at-first-sight experience," Hoffman said. "I really did. I thought, 'This is the work of the rest of my life.' And it has been."

Tolstoy and Sofya had a love-at-first-sight experience, too. Their stormy 48-year marriage was filled with joy, passion and conflict.

"Still, the fact that they loved each other at the end is a great story. It's also a story I understand and respond to because it's my story - our story," Hoffman said.

Hoffman infused the memory of that moment into his screenplay in Sofya's line to Tolstoy: "I'm the work of your life; you're the work of mine. That's what love is."

It makes all the clips.

"That's right out of our marriage," Silva said.

A LIFE OF ADVENTURE

The timing of the 1988 Koffee Klatsch meeting wasn't perfect.

Both were visiting Boise for the holidays. Silva had been living in San Francisco and was on her way to Italy a few days later for an extended stay.

Hoffman asked Silva out that morning. They spent the next few days in what Silva thought was a mini-romance. It was a deeper experience for Hoffman.

He caught up with her in Italy through Ericson, who delivered a 40-page love letter to Silva. That was the turning point, she said.

"I could see it was a serious thing, and that he was serious," Silva said. "I decided to take the leap."

When Silva returned from Italy, they merged their lives, bought a house in Boise, traveled through Europe, had a baby, then married in 1994 in England while Hoffman was filming "Restoration."

They lived in Italy while filming "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and England again with their three children - Atticus, now 16; Phoebe, 13; and Olivia, 9 - while Hoffman worked on "The Last Station."

They continue to make Boise their home base, living in a Tuscan-style farmhouse near the Boise River. Theirs is a creative partnership, in which they support, inspire and push each other to be their best, Silva said.

RESTING VS. CHALLENGING

"It's a house of big emotions, big ideas and big ambitions," Silva said. "Fundamentally, we try to keep the family together. To let the kids have a normal life, and have it still be an adventure."

The level of emotional conflict in the Tolstoys' on-screen marriage is beautifully larger-than-life, as befits those two looming, literary personalities.

The real-life conflicts in Hoffman and Silva's union are comparatively low key, less histrionics but enough emotion to keep them on their toes, Silva said.

"It's what you sign on for," Silva said. "There are some people for whom a marriage is a place to rest. It's about companionship, comfort, tenderness and relaxation.

"The other perspective is that you pick someone who will challenge you at every turn. I think we fall much more on that end. We are not a place to rest."

Dana Oland: 377-6442