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April 15, 2011
Atlas Shrugged In Theaters Today
Part 1 of 3, that is. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers says:
Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal. It's the first in a planned trilogy of films. Let's hope the other two parts are quickly aborted. The story, set in 2016 and hailing the individual in the battle against big government, concerns the disappearance of the world's most creative minds after they are asked the question: "Who is John Galt?" Who's the idiot responsible for this fiasco? You can't blame the Tea Party, an organization of 9 million that the film's producers are exploiting to get butts into seats. There's an object lesson in objectivism for you.
The list of theaters in California that are showing Atlas Shrugged today. It's a little interesting that four theaters in San Diego are showing it, while only one theater each in Los Angeles and San Francisco proper has it. No theaters in the Coachella Valley have it.
A long, long time ago (I'm talking like 30 years or so) a friend gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged as a gift. He had no interest in the book, but I thought I owed him a little plot summary. That plot summary happened to come when I was about two-thirds of the way through the book and the two us had dropped acid together (yes, I mean LSD). The plot of Atlas Shrugged on acid is absolutely hilarious! The re-telling of the story like that is one of the top 10 — no, maybe top 5 — most joyful experiences in my life. It leaves you with a healthy attitude towards this giant novel. If you plan to try to see the movie in a similar state, I suggest that you should take in the late show in order to minimize the possibility that your wild cackling will alarm children in the audience.
At Rotten Tomatoes the rating from the critics is 6% (0% is bad, 100% is good). But it's doing better at Metacritic, where it's hitting 27 (again, on a 0 to 100 scale).
Silas Lesnick at comingsoon.net says:
"Atlas Shrugged" is double-feature material for "Battlefield Earth," offering a slavish interpretation of a story whose primary reason for being retold in the first place is cult devotion. While said devotees may deem the film successful at literally bringing the events of the book to the screen, there's zero sense of character, dialogue or pacing. That is, the requisite traits that even make this technically a story in the first place are close to nil. Every scene in the film is a corporate meeting between two fantastically dimensionless characters, either "good" or "bad," pretty much alternating between good/bad and good/good pairings. Cut, now and then, with footage of a train, leading to the film's dramatic climax... people riding on a train.
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: "In ideology, it is a long-winded celebration of the free market and a condemnation of big government, noticeably short on the stew of sex and self-interest that makes other Rand adaptations (We the Living, The Fountainhead) entertaining for those who do not share her political views."
At the libertarian standard bearer Reason, Kurt Loder says:
It's a blessing, I suppose, that Ayn Rand, who loved the movies, and actually worked extensively in the industry, isn't alive to see what's been made of her most influential novel. The new, long-awaited film version of Atlas Shrugged is a mess, full of embalmed talk, enervated performances, impoverished effects, and cinematography that would barely pass muster in a TV show. Sitting through this picture is like watching early rehearsals of a stage play that's clearly doomed.
This isn't loony-bin stuff: Attention must be paid.Though a bit stiff in the joints and acted by an undistinguished cast amid TV-movie trappings, this low-budget adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel nevertheless contains a fire and a fury that makes it more compelling than the average mass-produced studio item.
Mark Jenkins at the Washington Post:
The filmmaker occasionally betrays his muse. Simply by casting flesh-and-blood actors to portray Rand's stick-figure characters, Johansson softens the story (including one of the author's notoriously severe sex scenes). Consider, for example, Taylor Schilling as the heroine, railroad executive Dagny Taggart. The blond, blue-eyed Schilling has a strong chin that gives her a Randian aspect, but when she smiles she looks too human for the role.The script also improves on Rand by compressing the narrative. The movie features more than a few inert scenes of industrialists' chatter, but it moves at a reasonable clip — although nothing like the 250 mph of Dagny's proposed high-speed train.
Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal:
I wanted to give this movie a fair shake, though I can't pretend to be an admirer of Ayn Rand's writing. But the movie, the first installment of a projected trilogy, doesn't give the book a fair shake. In terms of craftsmanship it's barely professional, except for Taylor Schilling's tightly focused performance as Dagny Taggart, the heroine trying to keep her railroad company from being destroyed by a government that's hostile to individual achievement.
"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1'' is set in 2016, but people still get breaking news from a fictional Fox-like cable station and — heartening for some of us — newspapers are still sold in vending machines. Wealthy industrialist Henry Reardon (Grant Bowler) joins forces with like-minded entrepreneur Taggart to bring a high-speed train through Colorado despite government attempts to thwart their ingenuity. Meanwhile, billionaire CEOs are vanishing as a shadowy man in a hat, trench coat, and Dark Knight rasp (director Paul Johansson doing double duty) arrives at their doors.
The tinhorn film version of "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" fails to rise even to the level of "eh" suggested by Ayn Rand's title. But with so little going on in cinematic or storytelling terms, we can cut straight to the fascinating, tea-stained politics of the thing.
Peter Debruge at Variety shreds it:
A monument of American literature is shaved down to a spindly toothpick of a movie in "Atlas Shrugged," a project that reportedly once caught the eye of Angelina Jolie, Faye Dunaway and Clint Eastwood. Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave, considering how it violates the author's philosophy by allowing opportunists to exploit another's creative achievement -- in this case, hers. Targeting roughly 200 screens, pic goes out hitched to a grassroots marketing campaign, hoping to break-even via by-popular-demand bookings and potential Tea Party support.
Bill Goodykoontz at The Arizona Republic also misspells "Rearden," causing me to wonder if he has some long-secret connection to Loren King at the Boston Globe or did the PR people for the movie misspell it in a press packet?!
Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) runs Taggart Transcontinental, the largest railroad company left. She's independent, determined to run the company on her own terms - unlike her brother James (Matthew Marsden), who is a tool of government toadies and special-interest dopes, drawn comically broad. They conspire to suppress individual creativity and success, pushing through legislation in favor of something that sounds an awful lot like - gasp! - communism.They want to cripple Henry Reardon (Grant Bowler), whose company has come up with a new, better steel that would be perfect for railroad tracks. James is aghast at doing business with Reardon, but Dagny is drawn to his ideas, his integrity, his . . . oh, those dreamy eyes. Dreamy something: They are clearly meant for each other, in the most obvious of movie ways.
Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times writes an absolutely hilarious review:
And now I am faced with this movie, the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it. For the rest of us, it involves a series of business meetings in luxurious retro leather-and-brass board rooms and offices, and restaurants and bedrooms that look borrowed from a hotel no doubt known as the Robber Baron Arms.During these meetings, everybody drinks. More wine is poured and sipped in this film than at a convention of oenophiliacs. There are conversations in English after which I sometimes found myself asking, "What did they just say?" The dialogue seems to have been ripped throbbing with passion from the pages of Investors’ Business Daily.
So OK. Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. It’s not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining?
There is also a love scene, which is shown not merely from the waist up but from the ears up. The man keeps his shirt on. This may be disappointing for libertarians, who I believe enjoy rumpy-pumpy as much as anyone.
Todd McCarthy at The Hollywood Reporter predicts there will be no parts 2 and 3:
[S]creenwriters Brian Patrick O'Toole and John Aglialoro (also a producer) have themselves bungled in their attempt to remain faithful to the letter of the sacred text while moving the action to the near-future (specifically, 2016). Many scenes are devoted to dull conversations among business fatcats about the economics of railways and steel, central industries that helped drive the nation 60 years ago but seem like afterthoughts today (Amtrak, anyone?). Updating the story would provide a provocative test to any writer but could certainly be done; however, to do so without acknowledging the present-day realities of high-tech industries, outsourcing, shifting transportation modes and advanced information technology (the characters here actually read newspapers) places the action in an unrecognizable twilight zone. So does the fact that the central manufacturing triumph here is the construction of a high-speed train (managed from scratch within a few months, no less). Not only is it unremarked that Asia and Europe are decades ahead on this front, but conservatives who might be perceived as the core audience for this film are the very ones currently fighting against fast-train funding and construction in the U.S.
Mick La Salle at the San Francisco Chronicle gives what might be the most positive review:
What is a selling point are the boldly drawn characters, played by a cast of unknowns, some of whom deserve to be known. I'm thinking in particular of Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart, a railway heiress, and Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden, a manufacturing magnate and the inventor of Rearden Metal. Even with director Paul Johansson practically missing in action, giving them nothing, Schilling and Bowler are forceful and attractive.I'd be willing to sit through Part 2 right now.
This is all making me think I need to start looking around for some LSD again. OTOH, maybe some more decades of patience will do the trick. There were failed attempts at the Lord Of The Rings trilogy before Peter Jackson's glorious success.
Filed under Books,Film/Movies,Libertarianism | permalink | April 15, 2011 at 11:18 AM
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