Hey PJ. You made me shrug!
Just one persons opinion. I and thousands of others will watch and make up our own minds. Then a decent discussion can come out of it.
But I will not pan “Atlas Shrugged.” I don’t have the guts. If you associate with Randians—and I do—saying anything critical about Ayn Rand is almost as scary as saying anything critical to Ayn Rand. What’s more, given how protective Randians are of Rand, I’m not sure she’s dead.
The woman is a force. But, let us not forget, she’s a force for good. Millions of people have read “Atlas Shrugged” and been brought around to common sense, never mind that the author and her characters don’t exhibit much of it. Ayn Rand, perhaps better than anyone in the 20th century, understood that the individual self-seeking we call an evil actually stands in noble contrast to the real evil of self-seeking collectives. (A rather Randian sentence.) It’s easy to make fun of Rand for being a simplistic philosopher, bombastic writer and—I’m just saying—crazy old bat. But the 20th century was no joke. A hundred years, from Bolsheviks to Al Qaeda, were spent proving Ayn Rand right.
Not much of a review. Mr. O'Rourke sounds as if he is a disciple of Ellsworth Toohey offering criticism of one of Howard Roark's buildings.
WAIT!
Don’t pan the article until you’ve read it.
It is a very respectful piece.
And if you won’t read it, at least read this part:
““Atlas Shrugged” presents other problems for a moviemaker. The book was published in 1957 and set in an America of the future. But time seems to have taken a U-turn, so that we’re back in a worse Great Depression with a more megalomaniacal business competition-loathing FDR-type administration. All sorts of things have been uninvented, such as oil pipelines so that oil has to be shipped by rail, railroads being the dominant form of transportation. Airplanes exist, but knowing where to fly them apparently doesn’t, because a secret hidden unknown valley in the Rocky Mountains figures in the plot, which also hinges on a substance that’s lighter and stronger than steel. This turns out to be a revolutionary new steel alloy! Because Rand forgot about plastics.”
Dude. That’s funny.
I think he makes a very valid point. Atlas Shrugged was an eye-opener for the times. This movie may miss that opportunity and we will be all shrugging that all of what is happening today is just normal.
This review is mixed, but well worth reading.
Having read it, I wonder whether it might not work better as a black satirical comedy. I mean, the villains are almost without exception evil clowns, but they’re still clowns.
I presume they were given money for showing up. I can stay home and watch "The Quiet Man" again for free.
PJ O’Rourke has made a trademark of damning with faint praise. If this review was a simple paean, he wouldn’t get nearly as much chance to show us how witty he is.
PJ ping.
The absolutely worse part of the book besides Ayn’s turgid at best writing style is that she refused to use an editor. That’s how we end up with a 100 page screed by Galt. That book could have been shortened by over 200 pages without missing anything.
The Fountainhead is better although Roark gets an over 10 page screed plus the writing has improved but I’ll never accept Roark raping Dominique because Roark knew they both wanted it.
If you want to read one of her books that isn’t pages of screeds and black and white characters, try, “We the Living”. It shows post revolutionary Russia for what it really was and although the story is bleak, it is well written.
I’m not a Randist-Objectivist or someone who has even read Atlas Shrugged. I do have the book though, and plan to wade through it some time. I did read The Fountainhead, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ditto for the movie. O’Rourke makes a huge error (i.e. the crack about Adam Smith not writing a book that could be made into a move) in forgetting that many people do not read books. They do go to movies...if they’re interesting enough. If the movie is good enough, the message will get through. And a further tuttutting to P.J., the Marxists are still after the rich. To be sure, they’ll take money from anyone, but they would still like to stick it to the wealthy.
Riiiggghht. Plastic rails.
We will see a lot of this - the moochers will be in full battle mode for two reasons: though they cannot understand what Rand is saying - in quite plain English - they know they're on the losing side and it frightens them, rather like little kids who fear the boogie man in the closet.
They are also afraid of mirrors - and Atlas Shrugged is a giant mirror. The moochers really don't want to look themselves in the face.