I watched "Atlas Shrugged: Part I" with low expectations, knowing that it is a rush job, knowing that "Variety" complained that it lacks the passion of the Ayn Rand novel on which it is based, knowing that the leads are relative unknowns with few achievements (though many of the supporting roles went to fine actors like Graham Beckel, Patrick Fischler, Edi Gathegi, Michael Lerner, Jon Polito, Armin Shimerman and Rebecca Wisocky).
It turns out that too low expectations are not completely justified even though too high expectations would lead to disappointment. Chief among the things about "Atlas" that are good would be Grant Bowler's performance as Henry "Hank" Rearden. Bowler is understated but exudes confidence when he needs to. (He reminds me of a young Gary Sinese.) As Rand's flawed hero, Bowler is the most nearly perfect of the leads. Rearden harbors a degree of self-loathing because he buys into how other people see him—even though he often says he doesn't care how others see him. This is an aspect of his character arc that could have been handled better. Here, Rearden does not treat the heroine, Dagny Taggart, either passionately or shabbily enough. His conflicted relationship to her changes in the course of the novel, mirroring the other changes in his character. The movie has not built a foundation for that here, but they could still make up for this by developing Rearden's conflict more in "Atlas Shrugged: Part II," which the producers hope to be able to make.
Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart is, I am afraid, adequate. Adequate can be good sometimes; however, for more than fifty years, this has been one of the most anticipated roles in the history of fantasy casting; so merely adequate will not do. Dagny needs to be the strong center of the story, and Schilling unfortunately doesn't rise to the task.
. Rand would have been glad that the movie does not overlook the raw power and even glamor of productive industry, using shots of Rearden in his office high above the floor of his steel mill, where sparks pour off of molten metal. She might have appreciated the scenes of men and machines systematically tearing up worn old railroad track and then replacing it with shiny new rails. Much has been made of how "Atlas" was kept under budget by using CGI for the high-speed train run, but I found this an enjoyable vision, even though all those who have read the book are not exactly going to be on the edges of their seats over the outcome.
Set in 2016, the movie reflects today's climate of anti-free-market capitalism with its paradoxical undercurrent of crony capitalism, even as it uses footage of the recent anti-capitalist unrest in our world to illustrate the world in which the movie's characters live. This is not an imposition on Rand's text, but rather it is a fulfillment of it: Rand's novel used to strike me as something of a satire or parody, exaggerating the economically enervating tendency of government and big business to get into bed together, but today life seems to be imitating her art. What the government czar, Wesley Mouch*, does to Jim Taggart's competitor in the movie is what politicians and regulators have done and are doing to real life companies as well as to whole industries today. Read the headlines of your newspaper, and it looks as if we are living in the dystopia that Rand dreamed up more than half a century ago.
This movie represents only the first third of Rand's novel. I think that while it is not as good as it might have been, it lays enough groundwork so as not to close off the possibility of improvement in any subsequent entries in the trilogy that there might be. (Who knows? Perhaps even Taylor Schilling might improve.) I would, however, wish that each producer who has taken on "Atlas" through the years had not commissioned a new script each time including this. I intuit that a dramatic improvement would be effected if they could get the rights to Stirling Silliphant's 1970s script for "Atlas" that probably is just sitting in some file cabinet; yet it reputedly has in it the passion that seems to be missing from "Part I".
*In the movie it is pronounced "Mowsh" while I had imagined it being pronounced "Mooch". I wonder what Rand intended.
It turns out that too low expectations are not completely justified even though too high expectations would lead to disappointment. Chief among the things about "Atlas" that are good would be Grant Bowler's performance as Henry "Hank" Rearden. Bowler is understated but exudes confidence when he needs to. (He reminds me of a young Gary Sinese.) As Rand's flawed hero, Bowler is the most nearly perfect of the leads. Rearden harbors a degree of self-loathing because he buys into how other people see him—even though he often says he doesn't care how others see him. This is an aspect of his character arc that could have been handled better. Here, Rearden does not treat the heroine, Dagny Taggart, either passionately or shabbily enough. His conflicted relationship to her changes in the course of the novel, mirroring the other changes in his character. The movie has not built a foundation for that here, but they could still make up for this by developing Rearden's conflict more in "Atlas Shrugged: Part II," which the producers hope to be able to make.
Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart is, I am afraid, adequate. Adequate can be good sometimes; however, for more than fifty years, this has been one of the most anticipated roles in the history of fantasy casting; so merely adequate will not do. Dagny needs to be the strong center of the story, and Schilling unfortunately doesn't rise to the task.
. Rand would have been glad that the movie does not overlook the raw power and even glamor of productive industry, using shots of Rearden in his office high above the floor of his steel mill, where sparks pour off of molten metal. She might have appreciated the scenes of men and machines systematically tearing up worn old railroad track and then replacing it with shiny new rails. Much has been made of how "Atlas" was kept under budget by using CGI for the high-speed train run, but I found this an enjoyable vision, even though all those who have read the book are not exactly going to be on the edges of their seats over the outcome.
Set in 2016, the movie reflects today's climate of anti-free-market capitalism with its paradoxical undercurrent of crony capitalism, even as it uses footage of the recent anti-capitalist unrest in our world to illustrate the world in which the movie's characters live. This is not an imposition on Rand's text, but rather it is a fulfillment of it: Rand's novel used to strike me as something of a satire or parody, exaggerating the economically enervating tendency of government and big business to get into bed together, but today life seems to be imitating her art. What the government czar, Wesley Mouch*, does to Jim Taggart's competitor in the movie is what politicians and regulators have done and are doing to real life companies as well as to whole industries today. Read the headlines of your newspaper, and it looks as if we are living in the dystopia that Rand dreamed up more than half a century ago.
This movie represents only the first third of Rand's novel. I think that while it is not as good as it might have been, it lays enough groundwork so as not to close off the possibility of improvement in any subsequent entries in the trilogy that there might be. (Who knows? Perhaps even Taylor Schilling might improve.) I would, however, wish that each producer who has taken on "Atlas" through the years had not commissioned a new script each time including this. I intuit that a dramatic improvement would be effected if they could get the rights to Stirling Silliphant's 1970s script for "Atlas" that probably is just sitting in some file cabinet; yet it reputedly has in it the passion that seems to be missing from "Part I".
*In the movie it is pronounced "Mowsh" while I had imagined it being pronounced "Mooch". I wonder what Rand intended.