Atlas Shrugged (the movie): my take on it

[BaalChatzaf]

I saw -Atlas Shrugged- (the movie) this afternoon.

Several points.

1. It in no way replicated (in movie form) the novel. No reasonable length motion picture or series of motion pictures could do that.

2. Taken -as a motion picture- on its own terms it was reasonably good. In particular they managed to make railroad travel circle 2015 believable. I thought it was rather cleverly done.

3. The technical ambiance: think of Atlas Shrugged with cell phones, desk top computers with flat screens. Not bad.

Now, most important, the characters:

a. Hank Rearden. In the novel Rearden was a psychological train wreck (sic) for starters. He was conflicted, particularly in his sexual outlook. The movie Rearden was relaxed and very much at home with himself. His relations with Dagney Taggart were not shot through with guilt and self-loathing. Movie-Rearden is very reasonable.

b. Fransisco D'anconia. Nothing like the character in the novel. He looks like a Mexican drug lord on a vacation in the U.S.

c. Dagney Taggart. Very appealing and very much centered and clear thinking. In that respect, like the novel. But not a romantic characters as I understand the idea. She is very much at home in her body and her mind and in that respect she is like the novel counterpart.

John Galt. Some dude with a hat pulled over his face and wearing ratty clothes.

Now the technicals. The Galt Machine is a device for extracting zero point energy from the Cassimir Effect. It is ironic in the extreme that the movie machine should be the embodiment of quantum physics, a set of ideas that Rand and the Shi'ite Objectivists despise. There are no violations of thermodynamic laws that I can see. I was very much amused by the irony.

Please have a look at this: http://www.calphysics.org/Patent.html

And now the Train Trip. I lived a year out in Colorado and came to live the outdoors of it all. I was in the process of becoming a West of the Mississippi person able to breath the mile high air of Colorado Springs comfortably. I loved the scenery in the movie. The Train Trip left a lump in my throat and a slight adolescent tightening of the groin. I thought that was the best scene and the best part of the move. I would give that segment a 10 out of 10 easily.

My rating. As a movie (note that) I will give it 7 out of 10. I hope they make enough money to produce part II.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited April 20, 2011 by BaalChatzaf