The Finest Movie about the Railroad Industry Since Silver Streak
By the time I got around to seeing the long-long-long awaited film version of Atlas Shrugged, my expectations were so lowered by its reviews, as long as the actors didn’t bump into the scenery and I didn’t see a “MADE BY LIONEL” logo on any of the trains, I probably would have considered the film a success on some level.
But actually, as the film unfolded and gathered steam — to use an appropriately railroad-themed analogy — I sorta, kinda, perhaps in spite of myself, began to like it. (WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.) I’d say the film was more enjoyable than any of the Star Wars prequels, but that’s setting the bar awfully low, in retrospect. But I guess that’s the trade-off. In the era of political correctness, you can have zillion-dollar films that are shows about nothing, or a slightly stiff low-budget film that will give you plenty to talk—and argue—about afterwards.
In his review at the Corner, Mark Steyn compares Atlas to “out-takes from Dynasty:”
Incidentally, I finally got to see Atlas Shrugged The Movie, which has been roundly mocked by various reviewers, including on the right (PJ O’Rourke). I broadly agree with Andrew Stuttaford’s take. The design is kinda goofy and a lot of the acting is like out-takes from Dynasty, but it’s still about something in a way that any number of slicker products aren’t. And in particular it’s about an America in which government departments with benignly technocratic names regulate, cannibalize and confiscate private companies in the supposed interests of “equalizing” differences between states.
Crazy, huh?
Let’s stick with stuff that’s far more plausible – like Sean Penn’s Valerie Plame movie…
Certainly the TV-movie-on-steroids feel of the film’s somewhat low-budget production values helps to create those Dynasty flashbacks, particularly in the film’s rather expository first two acts.
And speaking of TV, it was fun watching the veteran character actors who fill the supporting roles. Look, it’s Michael Lerner, from the Starksky & Hutch pilot. It’s Jerry Seinfeld’s landlord! It’s Jimmy Barrett from the second season of Mad Men. It’s Quark! It’s the crooked cop who sold out Sonny Crockett to Frank Zappa on Miami Vice! And so on.
Massive Suspension of Disbelief Overcome
At the start of the film, the audience, particularly those who aren’t that familiar with the book, are faced with two massive suspensions of disbelief to overcome:
- As Kathy Shaidle joked, “Seriously, people. It’s about a railroad. In the future.”
- Rand’s legendary arch dialogue, which makes the tone of Woody Allen’s serious films such as Interiors seem like natural conversation.
Let’s tackle that first part first. Given what blue screen and CGI is capable of these days, I would have preferred a much more stylized production design. Something along the lines of Mad Men meets Citizen Kane meets Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which would have placed the film in the 1930s through the 1950s, the golden-age of railroading, and perhaps tied it in visually as a sequel of sorts to the film version of The Fountainhead. But having seen the film, and understanding the budget constraints the filmmakers were under, I understand why the very slightly futuristic (read: contemporary) setting was chosen, as the filmmakers needed loads of ultra-high definition video shots of trains to make the film work. And certainly all of the realistic railroad shots (often shot at night or at sunrise/sunset to obscure the railroad names on the locomotives and passenger cars) help to set the stage for the digital effects employed to dramatize the rise of the John Galt Line in the film’s third act. (Incidentally, while we take railroads for granted, and cross-country passenger railroading was rendered superfluous by jet aviation, unlike Obama’s fantasies of high speed passenger railroading, freight trains will likely be a vital part of how durable goods move across the country for decades to come.)
Then there’s the dialogue. Before I went into this film, I only had one hope: Please don’t be as arch as the Gary Cooper/Patricia Neal version of The Fountainhead, a film brimming with important ideas (particularly given that it was shot in 1949, in the wake of nearly two decades of New Deal/WWII American collectivism), but laid low with big swatches of cringe-inducing dialogue. As Harrison Ford famously said in response to George Lucas’ impenetrable techno-babble dialogue during the making of Star Wars, “George, you can type this s***, but you can’t say it.” Rand’s dialogue works on the printed page, where the reader can imagine her larger-than-life characters, but even someone as iconic as Gary Cooper couldn’t make non-stop dialogue such as this work on the big screen.
This version of Atlas Shrugged probably makes Rand’s dialogue as digestible as it could possibly be in a movie. And the actors, both the aforementioned supporting vets, and the film’s stars, relative newcomers in comparison, do a pretty good job of making it work. If she isn’t blacklisted by Hollywood for appearing in this cinematic samizdat, the fetching Taylor Schilling, who plays Dagny Taggart, could have quite a career ahead of her. And Grant Bowler as Henry Rearden has a certain Coop-level diffident coolness, though without the superstar-aura that Cooper brought to his role.
A User Manual for the Obama Administration
While Kyle Smith questions the producers’ estimates of how well the film is doing commercially, the audience yesterday at the Santana Row CineArts theater was about the size of the audience when we saw The King’s Speech there earlier this year—a pretty good-sized crowd for a cinematic treatise on free-market capitalism even in deep blue San Jose. And based on their applause when the closing titles went up, they seemed pretty happy, after over 50 years, to finally see Rand’s book finally hit the big screen. (Drop me a line if you’re a fellow local who’s seen the film there.)
No one will confuse this version of Atlas Shrugged with say, a David Lean-quality Super Panavision ultra-big budget adaptation of a novel. But it got the job done, and considering America’s current economy is a nightmarish mélange of corporatism meets Gangster Government, its message is certainly timely.
Maybe too timely: I wonder if President Obama will look at the film’s opening montage, which references the price of gas going up by 2016 to about $38.50 per gallon look around at his staff, and say, fellas, dare to dream big.
Or to paraphrase Steven Den Beste’s quip about George Orwell’s 1984: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: a warning for the rest of us; a user manual for the Obama administration.
Update: Film critic Christian Toto on “Lessons learned from ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” excellent advice for any budding indie filmmaker.
As I’ve already said elsewhere, I thought this was pretty good for a modern B movie. The movie’s plot is an us-vs-them move-countermove setup, so it had plenty of room for twists to keep the audience engaged. Not bad for a non-documentary that was supposed to be about ideas. And as for this not being an A picture, I don’t think it would’ve felt quite right to watch a movie made by people entrenched in the Hollywood system to tell a story about characters trying to beat people entrenched in a sociopathic, power hungry system.
Small detail that pleased me by surprised: The understated continuity on the gift bracelet. Haven’t read the book; wonder how much more we’ll see of that in the next movie….
Saw it yesterday in Wilmington NC.
I think I was the youngest one there…and I am 49.
It was a good effort on a low budget. The abandoned engine was a little hokey and the dialog seemed pressured, but you still left the theater with a sense of foreboding that we are living in a time of looters and double speak. However dated and amateurish, it is still prophecy. Be very, very afraid.
I went to the movie with low expectations – not because of any movie review, because I don’t pay attention to them, but because making a movie faithful to the book on a low budget appeared impossible. I was pleasantly surprised and the theatre was 3/4′s full – in the hotbed liberal community of Athens, Ga – home of the University of Ga (a liberal arts college) – no less.
I have ordered some merchandise from the atlasshrugged website. The Reardon Steal bracelet is backordered, so their stuff must be selling.
The flaw with the movie is the same with the book, which I have read and adore. You cannot build a long term utopia for entrepeneurs unless you have children to pass it on to.
Can you post the merchandise website?
I saw the movie and thought it was very good. I also read the negative reviews, but couldn’t help but notice that all the bad reviews happened to disagree with the political message. I recommend the movie. Its delivers its message clearly, makes you think about things and is a refreshing change from most of the mind-numbing movies these days.
Steve,
I’m not at all sure that all of the negative reviews disagree with the message. Certainly the vast majority on the left do. But there are some on the right, such as P.J. O’Rourke and our own Roger L. Simon who extremely sympathetic to the film’s message, but aren’t crazy about the filmmakers’ style — or the lack thereof, to put it another way. But as I said, I’d rather see a B-Movie, or a made for TV movie with something to say, than an empty-headed zillion dollar SFX wankfest. Certainly this film will give the viewers plenty to discuss on afterward than simply, “whoa, stuff blowed up real good in this one.”
Ed,
Thanks for the correction. I get irritated when other people use exaggeration, like “all” instead of “most” or “many”. You caught me making the same mistake.
Ed, I enjoyed your review of the movie very much. I saw the film on opening night, and enjoyed it despite the lack of “things blowing up real good.” I am now reading the book, which I last read perhaps 25 years ago. The dialogue is pretty much taken verbatim from the book, which surprises me. I am having a great time reading the book again, and I’m constantly finding stuff I wish had not been cut from the film, but obviously they couldn’t include everything.
For instance, on the night Hank Rearden comes home to give the bracelet to his wife, (who, by the way, I just saw in an episode of “The Mentalist,”) Hank’s mother scolds Hank for not being home earlier so he could have met Mrs. Beecham, and in a wonderful line that was cut from the movie Hank’s mother explains that Mrs. Beecham gives classes in metal craftsmanship and wanted to tell Hank about “the beautiful wrought-iron doorknobs that the little slum children are making all by themselves.”
Ayn Rand continues; “It took the whole of his sense of consideration to force himself to answer evenly, “I’m sorry if I dissapointed you, Mother.”
I must go back and see the movie again when I’ve read more of the novel.
Atlas Shrugged brings out the vial hate and utter distain that Liberals have for “any” opposing view in their phony quest for harmony and love and peace. Libertarians are polar opposite to both liberalism AND conservatism as it preaches what both ideologies dislike, personal freedom and responsibility. Liberals and conservatives both view anyone’s success being at the expense of someone else. All things good and Human start at the point of freedom otherwise life is not worth living.
Three cheers for freedom.
“Those who soar high are invisible to those who choose not to fly.”
The very fact that this movie was made at such a time in America’s history gives me more ” hope” for ” change” than anything else does.
I found the movie very enjoyable. Sure, there were a few scenes where I felt sorry for the actors who had to deliver some tough dialog but overall I think the dialog even was fine.
Our family saw two movies over Easter weekend. Hannah – A hollywood action movie and Atlas Shrugged. All of us walked out of Hannah disappointed. All of us walked out of Atlas Shrugged happy. (Age ranges from 11 to 44).
As was the case in the book, enjoying Atlas Shrugged (v.s. just appreciating its message) only requires that you identify or can connect with Dagny and Hank. The movie pulls off that connection for those that are not so upset with a train in the 21st century that they can think of nothing else.
I read the book for the first time in my early twenties. I struggled for the first 200 pages because I didn’t like the protagonist, Dagny. I didn’t know it then, but my mind was fighting against a lifetime of brainwashing that it is wrong to care about yourself as your life’s centerpoint, what Rand calls “the virtue of selfishness.” It was as if there was a moment when my mind exploded, I suddenly got all of it, and I was forever changed. Among an infinite number of quotes from the book that occur to me almost daily was a dialogue between d’Anconia and Rearden when d’Anconia says that “making money” is a phrase coined by Americans because we were the first people who realized that money could be made and not merely inherited.
Mr. Driscoll: I don’t know how long ago you may have read “Atlas Shrugged” (the novel), but the movie does not adhere to the plot. The director and screenwriter seemed to have just tossed pages of the novel into the air and shot the story by which pages they picked up from the floor first. Rand’s dialogue drives the plot and subplots and matches the characters, who take actions. Little of her dialogue is in the movie; what is in the movie is on the level of banal soap-opera emotion-speak. The movie is also a certifiable mess because it abandoned the plot, which is suspenseful. The characterizations of Rand’s characters are so off-key that only the names survived. Francisco the copper king is portrayed as a kind of witless playboy, and Hugh Akston the philosopher is portrayed as a burned out ex-hippie. In the novel, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are passionate about their work, and later about each other; in the movie, their actions and attitude are so pedestrian they may as well be playing Bingo, or golf. The movie was made by incompetents who could not comprehend the novel in all its elements, or who were just too lazy to bother with sticking to the story. The movie is so badly made that one suspects it was funded by some of Obama’s stimulus money. It does not do justice to the novel.
Yes, Sparrowhawk, because the “incompetents” in Hollywood couldn’t shovel 450 pages of a stupefying political tract into 97 minutes of screen time, assuming they spread the entire novel over three movies.
It would be virtually impossible to both observe the text & spirit of Rand’s work, while at the same time making a movie most Americans would want to see.
Atlas Shrugged (the book) is nearly badly-written as Das Kapital or Mein Kampf, and for the same reason: the author was more interested in promulgating an ideology than telling a good story. Not to mentionall three are expressly atheistic.
Frankly, I’m astonished that so many otherwise-intelligent people would become so enchanted with a work which so obviously endorses a worldview wherein productivity is the function of a small number of “great geniuses;” an elitist point of view in opposition to the “army of Davids” described by Glenn Reynolds.
Casey: Yes, the people behind the movie were incompetent, not o mention literarlly careless, and I had no idea that my remarks would elicit such hostility from another reader. You’re the first to put the novel in the same level as Marx’s and Hitler’s works, an invalid comparison because Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is not a nonfiction political tract, but a philosophical detective novel. If you were going to make a legitimate but still invalid literary comparison, you ought to have cited, for example, Frank Norris’s The Octopus or Jack London’s The Iron Heel. Both of those are “badly written.”
You should ask yourself why so many people are “enchanted” with Rand’s novel (and perhaps even undeservedly with the mess that is the movie). Perhaps it is because Rand was a master craftsman and dealt in fundamental premises, which she was able to dramatize, premises held by most people. But, perhaps your measure of literary worth is someone like Jack Kerouac or William Burroughs.
As for the novel being “atheistic,” your accusation is revealing and typically conservative. In all her work, Rand was “atheistic” in that she was presenting a morality antithetical to the dominant one, altruism, which, in its collectivist application, has been responsible for much of the misery and destruction in man’s history. The tyrants moved by Marx and Hitler are, and will continue to be, fundamentally altruist, ready to sacrifice you, your life, and your happiness to some vague “greater good.” They are perfectly selfless about it.
By the way, in an early draft of Atlas Shrugged, Rand had a character, Father Amadeus, to whom James Taggart, one of the principal villains, gave his confession. She eliminated Amadeus from the final draft because he was redundant to the plot, even though he concludes in the end that James Taggart is pure evil, and withdraws his blessing and forgiveness.
I thought the movie is able to get Rand’s message across as much as you can do in a low budget, limited time production. I ,too, was pleasantly surprised. But the most important feat accomplished by this movie is to push Atlas, the book, to the top 10 best selling books in Amazon and spot #1, #2, and #3 in the classics. This movie has helped spike even more interest in Ayn Rand than the recent interest awakened by the Obama election. The film definitely draws people to the book. I’m hoping for a Rand revolution! I believe the film is probably one of the worst news for Obama at this point. It exposes him naked.
If it’s a duplicate comment, why don’t I see it here?
Why do you people keep harping on “a train in the future”? isn’t this what Obama is trying to push on us – high speed rail? if he’s going to accomplish his (their) goal of making us into serfs, he’s got to price gas out of reach, regulate what we can/cannot drive, etc. when we’re sufficiently humbled, the only transportation available to us will be HSR.
Katy,
As I tried to mention in my review, there’s a big, big difference between a privately-owned freight line, which builds rails into cities to be profitable, and pulls them up when they’re not, and having high-speed passenger rail forced upon America from Washington DC. As I said in the review, freight rail will be a vital part of the US infrastructure for likely decades to come.
Obama and his buds want everyone except their important selves in horses and buggies.
I appreciated reading this review of Atlas Shrugged. One review that I read last week focused on demeaning Ayn Rand’s personal life and the lack of quality of the movie — typical Alinsky. Those Alinsky followers must think no one recognizes their use of Alinsky’s rules! I went to see the movie with my sister and brother-in-law. He and I both read the book and my sister didn’t. We asked her afterwards if she had any trouble following the story line since she didn’t read the book, and she said she didn’t. Since a lot of people haven’t read the book, we can only hope that they to go see the movie. I hope the next installments get made — soon.
When I first read the book, decades ago, I also read the critics who wrote that Rand’s characters were cardboard stereotypes. I was inclined to agree with them, but still thought the book was interesting and significant.
Seeing this movie gave me a different perspective on that issue. It wasn’t that Rand couldn’t write deeper characters, it was that she couldn’t get her message across by being subtle. Embed the characters in richer interactions and reflective, evolving personalities and the social message gets blurred. Rand chose to be unambiguous and the book still exerts an influence on the culture.
The problem with Ayn Rand’s book is the same as with her philosophy, as pointed out most eloquently by Andrew Oldenquist. Why, he asks, are Rand’s heroes so moral — upright, truth-telling, etc.? Why are the not piranahs and cowards who betray each other left and right for personal gain? The answer is that Rand is NOT an egoist. She only THINKS she is. She is, in fact, a Kantian — a believer in absolute moral laws — which she tries (and fails) to deduce from egoism. She despises Kant, but that is because she is not self-aware.
Rand deserves significant credit for not giving herself any breaks: she tries to prove that egoists will be moral without the interferences of a government’s sword or religion’s threat of punishment in the next world to make egoists behave. But it simply doesn’t work.
I don’t understand why everyone keeps criticizing the use of railroads in the movie. First of all, to have changed the element to something else would have required a major rewrite of the novel.
Secondly, I think that having the country forced to rely on an impractical transcontinental railroad is more prescient TODAY than it was in Rand’s time (while I find 2016 a bit of a stretch for the conditions depicted, I would find 2026, and certainly 2036, HIGHLY believable). The fact that the Democrats are actively trying to push us toward such a mass-transit venture now is not a reason to abandon it as a concession to their values, but to show the realism of Rand’s nightmare.
Look at what else was said in the part I movie: there is enough domestic oil to satisfy our needs, but thanks to “well meaning” politicians, it sits in the ground unused. The innovators in the film develop metals, engines, and new technologies in an attempt to make transcontinental travel work the best way possible (they are also foiled at almost every turn by the politicians, unions, and greenies) showing that individual enterprise makes life better for everyone, but which we all know would be unnecessary if it weren’t for the government ensuring the oil stayed in the ground in the first place.
I found the movie to have several faults (Rand’s dialogue [but I understand leaving it as-is], and [especially] the delivery of that dialogue by the actors), but the use of trains is not one of them…
Actaully, in the face of $40/gallon gasoline and diesel (which is mentioned in the very beginning of the movie), a resurgence of rail for passenger travel and freight hauling makes a great deal of sense. It’s far and away the most efficient way to move anything in terms of tonnage/fuel.
I can accept the possibility of passenger rail resurgence in our future with not only the $40/gal gas you mention, but also with the free market developing technological and managerial breakthroughs, accompanied with the collapse of air travel due to continuing government interference and increasingly pointless politically correct security measures.
It took awhile for me to get into the movie (re: the bad first two acts crit) but eventually I did. I also softened up after the scene when Rearden looked out on his shop floor. Reminded me of the dumb look I have checking out some big project I just finished on my house.
My wife and I saw it last week at the Santana Row Cinearts 16:55 showing. There may have been 15 people there most likely due to the early hour and the fact that this was the end of the third week. It’s the first time that I have been in a movie theater for a non-children’s movie in > 15 years. I did not expect an $80MM production and I liked it. The audience laughed at all the right places, indicating to me that the message was getting through to them. Whether or not it sticks with them through the next election is to be seen. I would buy it on DVD or watch it again on Netflix. It’s been over 35 years since I read AS, Fountainhead, We The Living. I will go see AS2 and AS3 if they are made. As for the train hangup, if it bothers you so much, pretend that it was a new airplane design made from Rearden Composites. The actual thing is irrelevant, it is just a device for presenting reality.