Atlas Shrugged Producer John Aglialoro on Ayn Rand's Enduring Impact

[Guyau]

Brant, I wouldn't be surprised (#148). Atlas is short work after the killing of the guard and rescue of Galt. There follows the dark of the continent and dear Eddie stuck in it, then night in the valley and reprise of Halley's concerto. "The lights of the valley fell in glowing patches on the snow on the granite ledges and on the heavy limbs of the pines. But the naked branches of the birch trees had a faintly upward thrust, as if in confident promise of the coming leaves of spring." After Kira had been shot and finally lay still, dying alone in a snowy wilderness: "A lonely little tree stood far away in the plain. It had no leaves. Its slim, rare twigs had gathered no snow. It stretched, tense with the life of a future spring, thin black branches, like arms, into the dawn rising over an endless earth where so much had been possible."

I always liked the stretch in which Dagny ends up killing the guard. It dramatizes the Rand idea that thinking for oneself is necessary for life, with stress on the absoluteness of life or death. She had dramatized those ideas in a different situation just before Galt's speech. That was in the story of the close of Henry Rearden's steel mills, with Rearden carrying in his arms the dying government man, the young man Tony. In that scene, Rand had also enacted the absoluteness of life or death and the need for right thinking for life. I like the scene of Dagny with the guard also for its closure of certainty for Dagny---she will soon be at Galt's side where he will look up at her "as he had looked on their first morning in the valley"---and for her determination, with feeling of the line at the close of Ariadne: "And may the eternal stars die, rather than that you should die in my arms."

[Wolf DeVoon]

"And may the eternal stars die, rather than that you should die in my arms."

To pitch Atlas as a love story is absurd.

[Jonathan]

I think the scene was an indulgence on Rand's part to make a point about a "subhuman." (Did she explicitly use that word in the scene?)

Ellen

I don't recall if she used that word. I know that she did write that Dagny felt less about killing the guard than she would have felt for an animal.

J

[Jonathan]

I always liked the stretch in which Dagny ends up killing the guard. It dramatizes the Rand idea that thinking for oneself is necessary for life, with stress on the absoluteness of life or death.

No, it does not dramatize that idea. That may be what Rand intended, but, as written, it dramatizes Dagny being a bully, ignoring the guard's individual context -- the nature of his job, the reality of his rank and his lack of specific knowledge and power -- and wasting valuable time dishing out a forced morality lesson that is being applied totally illogically. The scene was a mistake, or, as Ellen says, an unnecessary indulgence. It contradicts both the morality and the aesthetic tone of the novel.

J

[Jonathan]

"And may the eternal stars die, rather than that you should die in my arms."

To pitch Atlas as a love story is absurd.

Pup, do you know Phil Coates? The two of you should team up and become professional consultants on everything.

J

[Wolf DeVoon]

Pup..

Talk like an adult, state your opinion about a substantive question. Is Atlas primarily a love story or not?

"That scene with Dagny and Hank in the diesel engine -- that's the whole story right there, Alphonse!" Ruddy used to say. "Not exactly, sir," I routinely replied, with varying degrees of emphasis, while two and a half decades slipped through our fingers... https://web.archive.org/web/20020619071004/http://www.zolatimes.com/v3.44/al_ruddy.html

[Brant Gaede]

In a way it is a love story--the love of Dagny for her work. The whole story hangs on that qua structure. And then there is Galt's oath. The novel cannot be simply summed up this way. Too much is left out.

--Brant

[Jerry Biggers]

Just a quick correction Jerry...

Sorry! Corrected in my post commentary to "heart." { In which case, the movie Who is John Galt? differs. Dagny shoots the guard in his shoulder, not in his heart (as in the novel excerpt, above)}..

[Wolf DeVoon]

In a way it is a love story--the love of Dagny for her work. The whole story hangs on that qua structure. And then there is Galt's oath. The novel cannot be simply summed up this way. Too much is left out.

--Brant

A self-love story?... Boy meets self, boy loses self, boy gets self.

"I'm sick of all these old cliches! Get me some new ones." -- Samuel Goldwyn

[Jonathan]

Talk like an adult, state your opinion about a substantive question.

Talk like an adult? You mean like writing page after page of bitching about movies that you've never seen? Heh.

Is Atlas primarily a love story or not?

What do you mean by "Atlas"? Do you mean the novel, Atlas Shrugged? If so, no one has been pitching the novel as a love story. You posted a scan of a poster which promotes the film Atlas Shrugged: Part III. Do you not understand that the poster was designed to promote the film?!!

"That scene with Dagny and Hank in the diesel engine -- that's the whole story right there, Alphonse!" Ruddy used to say. "Not exactly, sir," I routinely replied, with varying degrees of emphasis, while two and a half decades slipped through our fingers... https://web.archive.org/web/20020619071004/http://www.zolatimes.com/v3.44/al_ruddy.html

Pup, with your highly successful writing and promotion skills, and your eagerness to comment on things that you haven't seen, and on issues about which you know nothing, you really should consider teaming up with Phil Coates as expert consultants on how everyone else should follow your advice on everything.

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I like the scene of Dagny with the guard also for its closure of certainty for Dagny---she will soon be at Galt's side where he will look up at her "as he had looked on their first morning in the valley"---and for her determination, with feeling of the line at the close of Ariadne: "And may the eternal stars die, rather than that you should die in my arms."

Stephen,

In my own dot-connecting, there is more to this closure of certainty than meets the eye.

As you probably have seen in my other posts, I have been studying fiction writing from all kinds of different schools. One of my favorite techniques, which goes by many names depending on who you read, is what I call "throughlines."

A throughline is more than a plot. (Meaning a plot is only one kind of throughline.) It is a sequence of events with a discernible pattern denoting a change from one state or situation to another. A good novel has many throughlines on different levels, external, internal, psychological and abstract.

What is not a throughline is a random sequence of events. For example, if a guy at the start of a story is in his bedroom, then at the end is in another country on a mountaintop, but gets there by way of going to an ice cream parlor, going to the bathroom to relieve himself, stopping on the street to pet a dog, buying a hammer at a hardware store, then mentally teleporting himself to the mountaintop, there is no pattern to it. Oh, I suppose it could be called a meander and I suppose a throughline could have a patternless category like that, but I like to keep things simple in my mind.

If it's a throughline, it's got a discernible pattern. Meander is not a pattern. It's a random form.

These throughlines also happen with parts of the action, for example, a betrayal. That has a starting point where there is the appearance of harmony and an end point with the betrayal and (most often) exposure of it to the betrayed. A good author will make the change in this though-line discernible by dropping hints along the way, showing a gradual change in behavior by the betrayer, etc. If a person goes through a story totally on the side of the hero, loving, honoring and helping him, but betrays him in the end out of the blue without any throughline, we feel this is not believable. It's almost like a deus ex machina for a happy ending, except it goes tragic.

I extrapolated the idea of a throughline to the psychological process of Dagny changing her mind on a deep level. The drama of her not joining the strike comes from her not giving up on humanity. Or parts of humanity. I think that's pretty clear to everyone.

But in order for her to walk out on mankind and let the catastrophes roll, she has to get to a place of hatred at worst and indifference at best to the kinds of humans who oppose and destroy her values, whether actively or passively. Kind of like an eye for an eye, but on a deep emotional level. They are indifferent to my values, including my life, so I am indifferent to theirs. They hate me, I hate them (when I bother to think of them). That kind of thing. Dagny was not that way in the beginning, but I believe she was at the end.

I have not mapped out the entire throughline of her psychological change from automatically presuming people are good to the state of indifference and/or hatred of some of them, but I have seen enough to know it is there. Here are a few highlights.

• Dagny spends a good amount of time in the beginning slamming an inner door shut every time more sleaze gets thrown at her.
• She may get angry on the spot, but she makes do with the situation, fixes the problem, then thinks about the sleaze no more.
• She started chasing down the good folks who were disappearing so they would keep working--for themselves, obviously, but also for the entire structure that serves everybody.
• She had to take time off and go to the cabin to think things through, not only because of Directive 10-289, but also whether she wanted to value people who would accept such a thing without thinking--people whose moral code she could not figure out.
• She broke down crying after appearing on the radio to talk about her affair with Hank Rearden--and that kind of experience does not come without enormous resentment. In this case, the resentment would be against the kind of people who allowed a world where this could happen and even thrive on the gossip.

I could go on, but I need to reread Atlas Shrugged to get this one properly mapped. Once done, I have no doubt there will be a pattern of straight descent (or ascent, depending on how you look at it ) from innocent benevolence and even love for humanity in general to informed contempt, indifference and hatred of humans who cultivate a mind that Rand called elsewhere subhuman and, when she was in a generous mood, a "missing link."

At the beginning of the novel, I don't believe Dagny would have been capable of shooting the guard in cold blood. At the end, it was nothing more serious than stepping on a cockroach.

So your "closure of certainty" idea in my view includes a totally guiltless contempt for the life of people who only do what they are told, enough contempt so she could walk out on humanity and take the vow to not live for anyone nor ask the same from others. Killing the guard was merely a concrete form of showing the throughline was complete and her perspective had changed for good. No more doubts on that score. Black and white. So you're in my way and won't choose to move even to save your own life? OK. Boom. Now you're out of my way. Done.

btw - I ran this idea past Barbara a few years ago, but in far clunkier terms. She went ballistic on me. What?!! Dagny progressed to hatred?!!!

But I believe Barbara would have ended up agreeing, like she did a few other times where she totally rejected something I was thinking, but later got used to the idea without the emotional load and examined my reasons.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Killing the guard was merely a concrete form of showing the throughline was complete and her perspective had changed for good. No more doubts on that score. Black and white. So you're in my way and won't choose to move even to save your own life? OK. Boom. Now you're out of my way. Done.

btw - I ran this idea past Barbara a few years ago, but in far clunkier terms. She went ballistic on me. What?!! Dagny progressed to hatred?!!!

But I believe Barbara would have ended up agreeing, like she did a few other times where she totally rejected something I was thinking, but later got used to the idea without the emotional load and examined my reasons.

Michael

I agree that the scene can be taken as representing Dagny progressing to hatred, and even progressing to an unfair, collectivistic judgment of the guard.

My guess would be that Rand probably did intend the scene to represent the guard as being unwilling to think and choose, even to save his own life. But she just didn't think the situation through very carefully, or realistically. Are we supposed to believe that Dagny would have let the guard go if he had stepped aside and said, "You know what, Miss Taggart? You're right! Thank you for opening my eyes. I will have the courage to think for myself from now on! I am a MAN! Please, feel free to enter this property that I'm supposed to be preventing you from entering! And good luck and godspeed to you on whatever you're up to! I promise not to alert anyone after you've passed, or to sneak up on you."

No. That's silly, isn't it? The guard would have known that anyone pointing a gun at him and demanding entry would kill him no matter what he decided.

J

[Wolf DeVoon]

They sent Dagny first, alone, to take out the door guard as quietly as possible. Only one other entrance, a window, and crashing through it another guard is shot, no questions asked. Perfectly normal in war. Tell lies, kill people, break things, interrogate prisoners at gunpoint.

"Somebody has changed your suppositions."

In April 2003, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (who later served a single term as a Congressman for Florida's 22nd congressional district) had an Iraqi police officer named Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi seized and brought in for questioning based on allegations he was planning an imminent attack on West's unit. After Hamoodi was allegedly beaten by an interpreter and several U.S. troops, West took Hamoodi out of the interrogation room and showed him six U.S. troops with weapons in hand. West told Hamoodi, "If you don't talk, they will kill you." West then placed Hamoodi's head in a bucket used for clearing weapons, placed his gun into the bucket and discharged the weapon near Hamoodi's head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_execution

[Jonathan]

They sent Dagny first, alone, to take out the first guard. There was only one entrance, other than a window (and crashing through it, another guard is shot, no questions asked). What's confusing about war? Tell lies, break things and kill people, get actionable information.

Exactly: tell lies, break things and kill people. Git 'er done!

Don't waste time on forced, illogical morality lessons. Don't ask a guard to demonstrate that he can think for himself while pointing a gun at him and refusing to let him think for himself.

J

[Brant Gaede]

I always liked the stretch in which Dagny ends up killing the guard. It dramatizes the Rand idea that thinking for oneself is necessary for life, with stress on the absoluteness of life or death.

No, it does not dramatize that idea. That may be what Rand intended, but, as written, it dramatizes Dagny being a bully, ignoring the guard's individual context -- the nature of his job, the reality of his rank and his lack of specific knowledge and power -- and wasting valuable time dishing out a forced morality lesson that is being applied totally illogically. The scene was a mistake, or, as Ellen says, an unnecessary indulgence. It contradicts both the morality and the aesthetic tone of the novel.

J

Frankly, I wish the guard had said to Dagny, "Are you here to rescue him? I want to help."

--Brant

American guards are much better people than Soviet guards, even in AS

[Ellen Stuttle]

Variety (reprinted in Chicago Trib)

[....] Stock footage, still photos and an omnipresent narrator awkwardly patch large gaps where the grandiose story goes beyond this movies ability to realize.

The review's reference to "an omnipresent narrator" triggered memory of a movie I saw thirteen years ago, Zentropa.

Rotten Tomatoes review link

[bold emphasis added]

Europa (retitled Zentropa for the American release) is an hallucinatory Danish film set in postwar Germany. Jean-Marc Barr plays a young German who aspires for a job as a street conductor. But this is no mere "Joe Job;" Barr's adventures on the line are designed as a metaphor for the emergence of the "New Europe" following the war. Barbara Sukowa costars as the daughter of a railroad magnate--and possible Nazi sympathizer. Many of the special-effects sequences are computer enhanced, but even the "live" scenes have an unsettling, surreal quality to them (colors changing abruptly, backgrounds shifting without warning, etc.) This experimental film left some viewers confused, which may be why English-language prints of Zentropa are narrated by Max Von Sydow. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Von Sydow's voice added to the surreal effect, I thought, giving the whole experience a feeling of powerful trance. I can imagine a similar technique working with a movie of Atlas.

Overall, this Part III movie gave me a feeling of pablum - Rand blandized and de-fanged.

Talking with Larry after we'd seen the movie, I made a comparison to the contrast between Mayhew's versions of Rand's Q&A answers and Rand's unedited answers, many of which I heard in person. Mayhew got rid of Rand's fire and passion. Similarly with the movie, even when exact lines from Rand were being used.

One aspect, however, I enjoyed - the performances of the bad guys. I thought that the actors who played Mr. Thompson, James Taggart, and Cuffy Meigs did well, and that the guy who played Floyd Ferris was a treat. I'd love to see him doing Cardinal Richelieu and/or Rasputin.

And I liked the Robert Stadler casting and performance better than in the other two parts. (I thought the Italianish guy who played the role in the first part was like a bad take-off on Enrico Fermi.)

All in all, I'm glad it's over, that there isn't a forthcoming Part IV to anticipate with dread.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

They sent Dagny first, alone, to take out the first guard. There was only one entrance, other than a window (and crashing through it, another guard is shot, no questions asked). What's confusing about war? Tell lies, break things and kill people, get actionable information.

You seem to be confusing what happens in the movie with what happened in the book, but I thought you didn't see the movie.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I always liked the stretch in which Dagny ends up killing the guard.

You liked it, but would you have thought that such a scene needed to be there for the sake of the plot if the scene hadn't been there?

~~~

Michael,

Rand wrote some extensive reflections about "Dagny's mistake" in her Journal notes. You've probably read those but might want to re-read them. As I recall (some years since I read them), the notes are along the lines of your throughstory for Dagny's development.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I agree that the scene can be taken as representing Dagny progressing to hatred, and even progressing to an unfair, collectivistic judgment of the guard.

Jonathan,

I generally don't use the word collectivist as a synonym for group. Maybe this is a nuance for some, but there is a difference. I don't find collectivist thinking as part of Dagny's mental processes. In fact, a contrary case could be made where she was totally collectivist in her benevolent attitude toward humanity as a whole and became more discerning as she went along from dealing with sleazy and/or unthinking (etc.) individuals, one by one. (I don't agree with that, but the case could be made reasonably.)

Also, I don't characterize Dagny's final judgment as unfair.

I'm only mentioning that because those are your thoughts, not mine.

In fact, (and I don't mean this in a snarky manner), I'm not really interested in the whole Rand was right/Rand was wrong perspective.

My real interest is to follow a writing technique I discern in a work I admire, one that I am uncovering on my own, and see if I can apply the good stuff I learn from it to my own work.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

They sent Dagny first, alone, to take out the first guard. There was only one entrance, other than a window (and crashing through it, another guard is shot, no questions asked). What's confusing about war? Tell lies, break things and kill people, get actionable information.

You seem to be confusing what happens in the movie with what happened in the book, but I thought you didn't see the movie.

Ellen

No, I haven't seen the movie. Do I really have to drag out a copy of the book? Ragnar crashed through the window.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rand wrote some extensive reflections about "Dagny's mistake" in her Journal notes. You've probably read those but might want to re-read them. As I recall (some years since I read them), the notes are along the lines of your throughstory for Dagny's development.

Ellen,

Actually I am going to look that up. Thanks for the tip.

You might be surprised, but I have not read the Journals yet. I have this book, but knowing it has been shaped and trimmed with Harriman's meat cleaver under Peikoff's watchful eye, I have kept putting off reading it.

But I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and read the damn thing.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

You might be surprised, but I have not read the Journals yet. I have this book, but knowing it has been shaped and trimmed with Harriman's meat cleaver under Peikoff's watchful eye, I have kept putting off reading it.

Michael,

The Journals aren't meat cleavered, just subtly tweaked in places to make Rand sound less tentative on some issue or other than she was. That's according to Burns' testimony, also according to that of someone I know who got access to the archives and did extensive comparison. Also plain in the content. No way could David Harriman - or Leonard Peikoff himself - have written the incredible stuff which is in those Journals. Ayn Rand could have, however.

To pique your interest:

pg. 424

Dagny Taggart

Her error - and the cause of her refusal to join the strike - is over-optimism and over-confidence (particularly this last).

Her over-optimism is in thinking that men are better than they are; she doesn't really understand them and is generous about it.

Her over-confidence is in thinking that she can do more than an individual actually can [...].

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

No, I haven't seen the movie. Do I really have to drag out a copy of the book? Ragnar crashed through the window.

Looks like I'm going to have to drag out the book.

Yes, Ragnar crashed through the window. However,...

Ellen

[Wolf DeVoon]

I'm just going to bite the bullet and read the damn thing [Journals of Ayn Rand]

Not much of a stickler for accuracy or completeness, I found it was inspiring, intimate, and familiar.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Looks like I'm going to have to drag out the book.

OK, I did check the book. Wolf is right that there's only one door to the building. Unlike my memory of the men leaving Dagny to chance upon a stray guard who hadn't been bound and gagged, Dagny was specifically assigned to approach the guard at the door while Francisco, Hank, and Ragnar were mopping up four other guards.

pg. 1148, original hardcover

There had been four guards posted at intervals among the trees, around the building. They were now disposed of: one was dead, three were left in the brush, bound and gagged.

Doesn't change my contention that the scene is unnecessary to the plot.

Ellen