The John Galt Line has finally pulled out of the station, and is barreling across the country picking up hitchhikers who may be wondering what all the fuss is about. After a spectacular pre-release advertising campaign that included multiple premieres in major cities and pre-purchased ticket sales that encouraged nearly 300 screen owners to give the film a chance, Atlas Shrugged Part 1 opened on April 15 (Tax Day) as the third-grossing film of the weekend (looking only at screen averages, not total sales).
"Mixed" is an understatement when describing the reviews. Professional critics on RottenTomatoes give it a 6% approval rating, perhaps the lowest rating I have ever seen for a film. Meanwhile, audiences gave it an unbelievable 85%.
In fact, the film doesn’t deserve either rating. It belongs somewhere in the low middle.
It is not as good as the 85% would indicate; audiences who saw it on opening weekend are rabid fans, bent on a mission to have everyone in America see the film and learn Ayn Rand's philosophy: free markets, free thinking, and self-reliance.
But it doesn't deserve the godawful 6% usually reserved for low-budget slasher flicks, either. It is not as bad as its low budget and relatively unknown cast of actors and producers would cause one to expect. It is respectable.
The cinematic quality is quite good, especially the outdoor scenes of Colorado and the special effects used to create the train and the bridge. The acting isn't bad, but it isn't great. Often I was painfully aware of Taylor Schilling being painfully aware of where Dagny should place her arm, or how Dagny should turn her head; I never felt that she embodied Dagny. Similarly, the background cast at the Reardens' anniversary party appeared to be made up of friends and family of the cast and crew (someone needed to teach them how NOT to mug for the camera).
For fans of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged Part 1, the brightest compliment for this film is that it stays true to first third of the book. (Parts 2 and 3 are expected to follow.) For fans of filmmaking, however, the biggest problem is that it stays true to the book. The film is dialogue heavy, with very little action.
I’m not a Hollywood film reviewer; but I’m a watcher and a reader. I know that books and films are two different genres, and their stories have to be presented in two different ways. Books are primarily cerebral; films are primarily visual. Books can focus on philosophy and conversation; films must focus on action. Books can take days or weeks to read; films must tell their story in a couple of hours. When adapting a book to film, streamlining is essential. Unfortunately, the words in this film are so dense that the ideas become lost.
Atlas Shrugged Part 1 contains some great quotations, but it is not a film that will convince anyone but the Rand faithful of the supremacy of the free market. It makes the same mistake that most libertarians do when espousing philosophy: it assumes that everyone already sees the problems in the way libertarians do. It does not sufficiently engage the non-business person in seeing the long-term effects for everyone when government intervenes in the market. I can hear my middle-class neighbors and colleagues saying "So what?" when Rearden (Grant Bowler) is forced to sell all but one of his businesses. "How is that going to hurt me?" they might wonder.
Even the conflict between Dagny's pure free-market economics and her brother James's (Matthew Marsden) collusion with government is insufficiently portrayed; Dagny seems to be simply getting around the stockholders when she takes over the John Galt Line. Moreover, she and Rearden can hardly be seen as icons of virtue when they violate a freely made and morally binding contract (his marriage vows) by jumping into bed together. Even more damning is Ellis Wyatt's decision to burn his oil fields rather than let anyone else enjoy the fruits of his labor. My middle-class neighbors would howl with outrage at this decision. In short, I don't see how this film will convince anyone that returning to free-market principles will improve our economy and our way of life. It seems like everyone in the film is cutting moral corners somewhere.
"Not bad" is faint praise for a movie that has been 50 years in the waiting. Unfortunately, business pressures caused it to be rushed through with only five weeks in the writing, and another five weeks in the filming. Business is often an exercise in compromise, and this film's production is a classic example. I think, however, that if The Fountainhead's Howard Roark had been the architect of this film, it would have been burned along with Ellis Wyatt's oil fields. It's good, but not good enough.
