Monthly Archives: April 2011

Then there’s the updating question. Rather than set the movie in 1957 (when the novel came out), the producers opted for 2016; the fuss over railways is explained by an economic crash and a Mid-East geopolitical collapse that have made oil a rare commodity, so trains are the only choice for long-distance travel.
This is a flimsy premise. Unless someone tainted the Middle Eastern oilfields with plutonium, we’d be over there “imposing order.” If that was impossible, we’d be pumping billions (both private and government funds) into every kind of power: Nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind. I’m inclined to agree with TYG that given lots of commercial shipping uses rails, the screenwriters overcomplicated things.
A bigger problem is that while the date is five years off, the tone seems very 1950s. They’ve got cellphones and computers, but even in big business I’d expect to see one or two people dressed less classically—a tattoo, a nose stud, an ear-ring on a guy, purple hair.
Rearden and Dagny’s attitude toward their adversaries seems outdated too. The standard business response to political attacks, propaganda and media blitzes and the like is to fight fire with fire: Hire your own lobbyists, your own PR firm, your own scientists to “prove” what you want proved. Maybe in the 1950s, it wouldn’t be remarkable that the good guys do none of this, but today it strikes me as wildly anachronistic. I assume that by Rand’s standards this would lower our heroes to the level of the bad guys, but the movie shows no awareness that this is unusual or noteworthy behavior.
Likewise, business donations to charity are so routine (whether out of sincere desire to help or PR tactics) that it’s hard to believe Rearden has to make his donations under the table (in an early scene). Come on, the man’s making steel, not selling WMDS to China.
The political dialogue is also unbelievable (and would be in any period, actually—how the hell does the federal government propose to levy a tax on Colorado?). In the real world we’re in the middle of a massive economic crisis with high unemployment, but the big debate is over whether it’s immoral to restore taxes on the rich to what they were back in 1999. The assumption that by 2016, our nation’s leaders will start recycling socialist clichés, let alone back them up with actions is pretty laughable (it’s also laughable that the first person Galt contacts is a banker, of all things—if there’s one thing big bankers are not in the 21st century, it’s visionary wealth-builders).
And frankly, the whole premise that Galt can topple the economy by convincing the titans of industry to walk out seems implausible today. Maybe it would have worked in 1957, but most corporations are not one-man operations. Bill Gates leaves Microsoft but Microsoft lives on. Disney survives, long after Disney went into that secret cryo chamber under Disney World. If the oil tycoon hadn’t burned his oil wells at the end of the film, I’m quite sure the company would have found someone to keep pumping the oil (and isn’t wrecking the company, rather than simply vanishing, a rather shitty thing to do to your shareholders?).
Even under the best circumstances, I doubt I’d be sympathetic to Rand’s themes, but this film definitely wasn’t the best circumstances.

•Obstacles. Here, I think is the real weakness of Atlas Shrugged; it has few of the obstacles common to business films and those it has, it doesn’t handle well.
Physical obstacles and attacks are popular in railroad movies: Indians in Union Pacific or the ruthless rival railroad in Zorro Rides Again, for instance. Not a problem for Dagny and Rearden, however (even when Dagny walks through an urban hellhole in the dead of night, nobody hassles her).
Gambling your business on one spin of the wheel is a natural dramatic ploy for a business movie (in Forty-Second Street, everyone’s job depends on whether Ruby Keeler can step in for the star at the last minute), but that’s not an issue here either. As Edroso points out, the flawless superiority of Rearden metal is never in doubt, and Dagny and Rearden never doubt it either, so the triumphant train ride on Rearden metal tracks is devoid of tension: We know it’s good, they know it’s good, proving it is merely a dull formality.
I wonder, by the way, if this reflects Rand’s emphasis on theme: If there were valid questions or risks, then the people questioning the “John Galt line” couldn’t be dismissed as quivering cowards, spineless socialists or scheming rivals standing in the way of man’s progress (which reminds me of one reason I love the political drama The Contender, for suggesting that making Joan Allen’s Senate nomination vote a referendum on her sex life is wrong, even though she’s not a perfect candidate).
Boardroom conflict is another reliable source of drama, but I don’t think Atlas does much with that, either. Dagny keeps telling James he’s screwing up, but rather than battle him for control of the family line, she goes off and founds her own. Rearden’s jealous steel-making rivals never confront him, they work through seedy political deals to tie his hands—and neither Rearden nor Dagny ever even confronts the political schemers and lobbyists working to undermine them, or sets their own in play. There’s never a real face-off with anyone on the other side, which undercuts the potential for drama. There aren’t even the angry mobs besieging Rearden factories that we saw in The Fountainhead or the fishermen trying to destroy the Thunder Bay oil rig.
The lack of detail wouldn’t matter so much if there’d been more conflict. Rearden metal could just as easily be a McGuffin everyone’s fighting over. But all we get is enough conflict to move the plot along, not enough to make it interesting.

Atlas Shrugged is a bad movie, but far too bland to be entertainingly bad.
Roy Edroso and Roger Ebert have done outstanding reviews (and here’s Edroso’s take on the right-wing attempts to praise the movie), so I’ll focus on just two aspects: Atlas Shrugged as a movie about business, and the problems of setting a 50 year old novel five years into the future. For reasons of length, I’ll be breaking it up into three parts.
There have been lots of movies about business, along with many that just use business as a backdrop for a murder mystery, social satire, etc. I think the successful ones have certain things in common—almost none of which are found in Atlas Shrugged.
•Details. Forty-Second Street (a film which treats Broadway very much as a business) shows a lot of the work involved in putting on a show. All the President’s Men and Day the Earth Caught Fire both give a lot of attention to the daily grind of hunting down a difficult story (though they’re not business movies per se). Skyscraper Souls presents Warren Williams’ skyscraper as a bustling, complex business, and we’re given a detailed look at the financial manipulations he uses to get the money he needs.
We get none of that in Atlas Shrugged. When asked why she’s enthused about Rearden Metal, Dagny simply asserts “I see what I see” (my impression of engineers is that they wax a lot more technical about that stuff). As for business, there’s rarely any more detail than who gets paid to invest in what; the only real details is about the various political machinations being employed to destroy Rearden’s dreams.
We see Rearden glance at his mills but doesn’t do anything except sign papers and discuss government regulation. Dagny starts a new company, but other than staring down the union men who question her, she doesn’t do much running it, and takes what appears to be two or three weeks off at the end of the movie to hunt down the lost inventor of a super-motor. There’s nothing other than the film’s say so that indicates most of the people John Galt is luring away are anybody special; the most Dagny can say about one of her employees who goes Galt is that he had management potential.
•Visionaries. Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead, Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, Warren Williams in Skyscraper Souls. Jimmy Stewart trying to develop an off-shore oil well in Thunder Bay. All passionate about what they’re doing. All determined to make it to the top (ditto the scrappy hero of the low-budget newspaper drama, park Row). We get some of that here—Rearden is clearly passionate about his metal, and an oil baron gets quite enthused about his business, but nothing compared to Cooper or Welles, Williams or Stewart (all much better actors of course).