Well, I saw Atlas Shrugged and loved it.
I have to be honest and admit that I'm not objective and was predisposed to like the film, almost no matter how it played on the screen. I saw the very first show at 2PM on Friday and the theater was about 20% full, which is good for a matinee, but not what I'd hoped for. The audience had a number of people who might have passed as business magnates, but a much larger number were nerds like myself with iphones and ipads which the manager had to beg us to turn off.
The verdict...it was great! Flawed but great!
I feel silly talking about the flaws. No doubt the filmmaker himself would agree with a lot of the criticisms that are leveled against it. He was a first-time feature director working with a minuscule budget and a sacrosanct script. He did better than most would have under the circumstances, and I'm just amazed that the film turned out as well as it did.
Condensing the first third of Rand's story must have been a nightmare. I'm reminded how awkward Tolstoy's "War and Peace" looked when Hollywood tried to condense it into two hours. A 6 hour (or was it 8?) Russian version done in the 70s made Tolstoy's points a lot better. Hollywood also reduced "Brothers Karamazov" down to two hours, but once again it was much, much too lean. Boy, the great Russian novels don't condense very easily. I hate to say it, but this version of Atlas suffers for the same reason. The story needed more room to breath. It needed to be a miniseries.
No matter. I was ecstatic. For two hours I got to live in a different world, and it was Heaven.
BTW: The film should be in the Landmark Regent for another week at least.
That sounds fantastic, considering that most directors first films are usually flops.
ReplyDeleteI appluade the director of this movie.
Cool! I'm reading that book for the first time right now. I'm still amazed by how massive in length it is, but I really like the story and message behind it so far. This is one of those movies I'll definitely watch in a theater this year when it gets a mainstream release or it ends up on dvd or pay per view. What other Ayn Rand novels do you recommend that I read after I finish Atlas Shrugged?
ReplyDeleteEddie: I agree!
ReplyDeleteFor whatever this information might be worth, I blogged about it here:
http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/
I think the best thing about it was the acting of the two principals. What a pleasant surprise that was!
Roberto: Holy Cow! You're starting with Rand's longest novel. I normally don't like long novels, which strike me as the product of self indulgent writers, but in this case I found myself wishing the book was even longer.
ReplyDeleteIt was just wonderful to be in the company of characters who passionately loved their work, and just loved being alive. Rand understands the tragic waste of a life lived in quiet desperation. Thoroughbreds want to race. It's in their blood, and they're only happy when they're racing. Rand thinks of humans as thoroughbreds. We're naturally streamlined for thought and action. It's a breath of fresh air to be in the presence of characters who feel this way, and can't even imagine any other way of being.
If you decide to bail, the book to read instead is The Fountainhead. That book seems to be directed to creative people, and attempts to answer the question, "How can I find happiness if the world isn't set up for people like me?" Her answer has tangents to the Greek philosophy of Epictitus. I dreaded coming to the end of that book because I knew I'd probably never find another like it in my lifetime.
Lester: A good review! I also found myself shocked to hear some of the things that were being said on the screen. I kept expecting the police to come in and shut the film down.
ReplyDeleteThe two main actors were terrific, and Rearden's wife, the union guy, and Wesley Mouche were great. Dagny's brother and Francisco were terrible in my opinion. and I wouldn't be surprised if the producer and director agreed. Probably there was simply no money to reshoot those scenes.
I haven't read Atlas, but I really like Ayn Rand based on her non-fiction essays, and King Vidor's The Fountainhead (1949) already had me convinced that her fiction could make for good movies.
ReplyDeleteBased on some other early reviews of Atlas, I was afraid this was kind of a dud, but I'm really glad to know you enjoyed it and will definitely check it out now!
Speaking of the book's length: I just looked at the last page of my copy of the first edition. The page number is 1168. Next to it I have written: "Gutenberg Bible - 1,282 pgs." As Stan Lee would say, 'Nuff said.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about me too much, Eddie. I managed to read The Fountainhead in little over a month or so. When the story is really good, it doesn't make a difference how long the book is. In fact, it only motivates me to really try to digest all the valuable wisdom and characterizations such novels contain. By the way, I think in the course of just a few days, I have read close to a fourth of Atlas Shrugged, so I hope to get that finished by the end of the month.
ReplyDeleteEddie have you ordered the Ernie Kovacs dvd from Shout! Factory? If not, hurry (before April 19th) to get the bonus 7th dvd.
ReplyDeleteI like some aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy, but most of it I find rather objectionable. I haven't read her books, but I did see The Fountainhead and REALLY liked it, because most of it wasn't about the virtue of selfishness... until Roark's speech at the end about... COLLECTIVISM. Atlas Shrugged, meanwhile, seems like it's ONLY about those aspects of objectivism I dislike... but I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteDespite that, on your recommendation, I can't fucking WAIT to see this movie, Eddie. Because she fascinates me.
Robert: An Ernie Kovacs set!? Thanks! I'll look it up!
ReplyDeleteJorge: I do recommend the film, but like I said, it has flaws and you have to be somewhat forgiving. Don't expect the polish of a big studio production like "The Fountainhead."
The scenes with Francisco and the scenes with Dagny's brother really needed to be reshot. It also needed some additional scenes to build up suspense and create atmosphere. I guess there was just no time or money for that. Well, I'm just grateful for what we got, and I'll be the first in line when Part 2 comes out.
BTW: I'm surprised that you didn't like Roark's courtroom speech in the older movie. It wasn't very specific, and I'm not sure it would have resulted in an aquittal in real life, but it was a nice example of rhetoric and word music, and Cooper did a good job with it.
I just remembered that I finally have reason to post this almost-two-decades-old Evan Dorkin cartoon.
ReplyDeleteI really liked Roarks' speech in the film, but I just didn't like the message about collectivism being bad.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is a work of art about romantic individualism.
ReplyDeleteI'll wait for the DVD. It's a litle too soon after the bail-out to listen to a billionaire capitalist call ME a parasite.
After families, tribes & nations have been dislocated & dissolved, we will still have collectives. We'll have corporations to identify with. It's an emerging race of abstract persons who can merge & metamorphosise in reaction to their environment & have the money to back up what they say.
Join or die.
Not my words. Lifted from an article on the subject.
ReplyDeleteShe is an interesting thinker, but not for me.
Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”
This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.”
Vincent: Fascinating! Thanks, I'll look this up.
ReplyDeleteWell it's a bit creepy, but that kind of youthful, morbid fascination with extreme things isn't uncommon among philosophical novelists.
The thing it reminds me most of is Sartre's cold disdain for other people in his autobiographical book "Nausea." He even went so far as to summarize the point of his play "No Exit" as "Hell is other people." I don't agree with Sartre on this or much else, but I don't think he was psychopathic or unsympathetic with the suffering of others.
Jorge: Holy Cow! A defender of collectivism! I've read defences of individualism before, but never a defense of the general idea of collectivism, apart from specific types. Maybe Hobbes attempted it, but I'm ashamed to say that I never got around to reading Hobbes. I only know what some people said about him.
ReplyDeleteI'm not against socialism of all kinds, I'm only against involuntary socialism. If I knew someone who wanted to establish a community of like minded people who want to share everything, or have common ownership, my only reaction would be, "Wow! Let me know how it turns out! If it works, I might try it myself!" I wouldn't get mad unless someone tried to force me to do it.
Unfortunately most modern socialists are influenced by the involuntary, one-size-fits-all Marxist variant. I don't think the notion of voluntary socialism ever crosses their minds.