“Atlas Shrugged: Part 1” opened in theaters on April 15. For libertarians of a certain age, it is an opportunity to reflect on the genius of Ayn Rand and a book that changed the world. For younger folks, it is an opportunity to discover a battle of ideas taking place around them.
The Film
I watched the movie on the day after its premier in a theater in Appleton, Wisconsin. Only 28 people were seated when the show started. Sitting near the back of the theater, I saw mostly grey hair and bald spots. At 53, I was one of the younger people in the room.
The age of the audience surprised me, since I encountered Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and assumed Rand’s appeal is particularly potent with young people searching for their identities and freedom from authority. The marketing of the movie was primarily online, and I assumed this too would mean a mostly young audience.
The movie tells the story well, and I encourage you to go see it. That said, it plainly shows the signs of a hasty production and small budget. There are odd scenes where the actors don’t seem to know what to say or do, the number of sets and props seems limited, and easy opportunities to develop the characters are missed.
Nevertheless, there are scenes that are very effective, such as when Hank Rearden gives his wife a bracelet made from the first pour of Rearden metal. It’s a scene that is actually seared in my memory, one I will probably never forget.
The characters are often stoic rather than expressive, which makes the few exceptions, such as the Ellis Wyatt character, a relief. “All the action takes place in the heads of the characters,” a friend who saw the movie told me later. It’s difficult but not impossible to capture that in a dramatic way on film. Suffice it to say, this movie doesn’t.
The movie won’t satisfy film critics and English Lit majors (did I stutter?), but I am neither and found it moving and memorable. It is faithful to the book and reflects Rand’s comments about her writing style and her attitude toward her audiences. If Parts 2 and 3 are better, the trilogy could introduce a new generation to an extraordinary book.
The Book
I read Atlas Shrugged over the course of three or four days during the hot summer of 1976, after I graduated from high school but before getting on a bus to go to college in Chicago. I read it while laying on the couch in my parents’ livingroom, and probably permanently damaged my back and neck. It was the first novel by Rand I read (eventually I would read all of them), and of course it was a revelation. I remember it.
No one had told me the world could be divided into makers and takers. Or that there was something strong, heroic, and good about the makers, and something weak, cowardly, and evil about the takers. But it made sense, and it explained some of the things I was starting to see and pay attention to. It still does.
Rand said there was a war going on between the two sides, and the makers were losing because they were too busy making things – creating wealth – to waste their time on philosophy. It was a flaw in the makers that the takers were all too happy to exploit. They used philosophy as a weapon against the makers.
If you wanted to join the forces of good in this fight, then you had to study philosophy.
It was my first introduction to the notion of a “battle of ideas” going on in the world. It was a war that could be won by thinking things through and acting rationally, not by picking up a gun. This was a battle that an 18-year-old kid who liked to read and who weighed 118 pounds soaking wet could sign up for.
All the supposed flaws in Rand’s writing style were invisible to me at the age of 18. What could I compare her to? But quite frankly, those flaws are still pretty much invisible to me 35 years later.
My wife, who also read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager, and I listened to an abridged version of the book on cassette tapes a few years ago while driving. It was magnificent. We had to turn it off every 20 minutes or so just to celebrate a finely turned phrase, shout insults at particularly evil characters, or ponder philosophical insights. It is still, after all these years, entertaining, informative, motivating, and correct.
Only one other book I’ve ever read comes close to Atlas Shrugged in staying power – that is, that I can open to almost any page today and experience the same emotions I felt the first time I read it. That book is The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek. It’s not nearly as entertaining.
The World
Rather than recreate the world of the 1950s, the producers of “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1” chose to set the action in the year 2016. The country is deep in depression, maybe a continuation of today’s Great Recession. Unemployment is high and industries are collapsing due to the disappearance of business leaders. Airlines have shut down because the competence and expertise needed to keep the giant birds in the air have gone missing.
The world depicted in the movie is an entirely believable forecast of what the future could be. Federal policies today are preventing the national economy from recovering, are making energy artificially scarce, and will likely bring ruinous inflation. Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs have chosen to sit on the sidelines and make the people who voted for Barack Obama and his fellow travelers live with the consequences of their poor choice.
In the book and in the movie, Hank Rearden battles with the State Science Institute, a once-respected institution that has become little more than a tool of companies that cannot compete successfully in the free market. Rearden’s opponents cannot point to any real scientific data indicating his new metal is unsafe, but they allude to a vague “consensus” that it is too risky and that everyone (meaning them) would be better off if it were kept from the market.
The parallels to today’s real-world debate over global warming, a.k.a. “climate change,” could not be more clear. The National Academy of Sciences, once a respected source of real science, can now be counted on to mouth the truisms of what Steve Goreham calls climatism in his book with the same title. Climatism is an ideology that preaches the belief that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth’s climate. It’s not science at all, only a creed invented to stop commerce and innovation and to feather the nests of the takers.
The battle between makers and takers that Rand so vividly portrayed in Atlas Shrugged goes on today. The makers are losing crucial ground to the takers as government debases the currency, redistributes income, dumbs down schools, and stifles competition with endless regulations. What is the Great Recession if not the consequence of the takers’ philosophy?
Thankfully, Rand’s novels woke up millions of sleeping Atlases. Through the years they have studied philosophy and taken up the battle against the takers. Rand did not endorse or anticipate everything that goes by the label “libertarianism” today, but that movement owes her a great debt and, in turn, has claim to being her progeny. So too the Tea Party movement, a rebellion against the takers and an effort to “take back our country.”
The Future
The advanced age of the people I saw watching “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1” was keenly disappointing, because a movie may be the only way Rand’s remarkable ideas can reach today’s visually oriented younger folks. But it is not too late.
Take some younger people to the theater to see “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1.” Give them the movie on DVD when it becomes available. Do it so they too can discover the war of ideas that is going on around them.
Maybe the young person you bring to the theater will end up devoting his or her life to fighting in that war. The book once had that effect on young people.
