Eagerly anticipated for decades, with numerous false starts along the way, a movie version of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, opened this weekend. The official opening day was April 15, a date associated in the American mind with the payment of income taxes.
Like Peter Jackson’s 2001 film, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, also the first episode of a trilogy, Atlas Shrugged-Part I, came to the screen with a readymade audience of fanatical devotees of the novel on which it is based. The positive aspect of this is that millions of people will buy tickets to see the film. The negative aspect is that a healthy fraction of those millions will be hypercritical in their reactions and express their disappointment vociferously.
Budget comparisons and star power
A major difference between Jackson’s project – whose third installment, The Return of the King, received a Best Picture Academy Award – and Paul Johanssen’s Atlas Shrugged – Part I is in their budgets. Largely self-financed by producer John Aglialoro (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Brian Patrick O’Toole), the budget for Atlas Shrugged – Part I is said to be just $10 million, compared with $285 million for The Lord of the Rings.
Peter Jackson’s trilogy was also what was once called an “all-star spectacular,” featuring such well-known actors as Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, and Cate Blanchett. In contrast, most people will only recognize two of the actors in Atlas Shrugged – Part I: veteran character actor Michael Lerner (perhaps best known for his roles in the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man and Barton Fink), who plays “bad guy” Wesley Mouch, and Geoff Pierson (the father on the WB’s Unhappily Ever After, he also had a recurring role on The West Wing) in a cameo as “Midas” Mulligan. Lead actors Taylor Schilling (Dagny Taggart), Grant Bowler (Hank Rearden), and Matthew Marsden (James Taggart) are largely unknown, as is director Paul Johannsen.
Box office returns
Despite these handicaps, Atlas Shrugged – Part I achieved a respectable return at the box office on its opening weekend, with a per-screen average of $5,590, just ahead of Robert Redford’s prestige Lincoln assassination drama, The Conspirator ($5,550), and just behind the wide-release of Scream 4 ($5,833), according to Box Office Mojo. Atlas Shrugged opened on just 300 screens (including four in Virginia) compared to 707 for The Conspirator and 3,305 for Scream 4. (The weekend’s top box-office draw was the animated feature, Rio, with a per-screen average of $10,455 on 3,826 screens.)
To gauge audience reactions to Atlas Shrugged – Part I, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner queried members of the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, receiving several colorful responses.
Charlottesville-based film and theatre critic Timothy Hulsey made an unexpected comparison.
Rand’s Rapture
"Now that I've seen the movie, I think I finally understand the appeal of Atlas Shrugged," Hulsey explained on Facebook. "It's basically Ayn Rand's version of the Rapture.
"Honestly,” he added, “I've seen quite a bit of evangelical Christian cinema, and Atlas Shrugged generally reminded me of the Paul Crouch-Trinity Broadcast Network Omega Code movies. That's not to say I didn't like it -- quite the contrary. What Atlas Shrugged lacks in financial resources, star power, and cinematic competence, it makes up in bats**t insanity.”
Huffington Post contributor James Peron attended a screening of Atlas Shrugged on opening night in Los Angeles with Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, two members of Rand’s inner circle. (Barbara Branden’s memoir, The Passion of Ayn Rand, was filmed in 1999, with Helen Mirren in the lead role.) Although they arrived inauspiciously, the Brandens were mobbed by fans who wanted to snap their photographs.
Grading it a “B+,” Peron – who also blogs for the Moorfield Storey Institute – reported on Facebook that “the film ruined the night of one Lefty type who couldn't walk by without screaming at everyone that Ayn Rand was a fascist, which just made him look like one of those crazy street people who start cursing wildly without provocation. The poor man must have gone home with a migraine thinking of all those people being indoctrinated into ‘fascism.’”
Peron recommends seeing Atlas Shrugged – Part I.
“It was actually a quite decent film, worth the money and my time (two hours in and two hours out in driving). It really just falls short of production values I had hoped for but [that's] understandable given their budget. The audience was happy with it. As I said, it was mostly a younger crowd, which pleases me. I have zero regrets about going and suggest you do, too, if you haven't already.”
Like Kelly and Hepburn?
Also on Facebook, Scott Hoffman of New York also used the word “decent” to describe the new movie:
“Overall, a decent, if not perfect, tribute to Rand's legacy,” he called it, adding that it is “an excellent expression of the new counterculture that is capitalism, without the overlay of guilt that usually accompanies conventional Hollywood fare.”
Hoffman also commented on the casting, saying that “Taylor Schilling reminded me of the movie stars of old like Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn-- women who could transform themselves by the end of a picture into exactly what their audience wanted.”
To that, Hulsey replied: “I'd have gone with ‘zombified Meg Ryan’ myself.”
Another New Yorker, libertarian writer Todd Seavey (who contributes to Reason and National Review), wrote on Twitter that Atlas Shrugged “started out strong -- great cast, decent” (there’s that word again) “and realistic depiction of characters -- I was very hopeful. Then, having escaped the obvious pitfall of stiff Randian speechifying, it starts bogging down in regulatory details with no clear ties and halfway through one starts to wonder (as in Watchmen): Will the normals follow this at all?” (By “normals,” Seavey seems to mean people who are not dedicated disciples of Ayn Rand.)
Continuing his Tweets, Seavey wrote: “And then you realize that, whereas Watchmen could at least be followed, Atlas Shrugged is following every petty, boring detail like Dune and follows the opaque, overbusy mush with a final ‘Noooo!’ that Vader-like, makes this Atlas Shrugged -- Episode 1: The Phantom Galt and ironically, it ends with a shot of a pivotal sign-post, though Atlas Shrugged [the novel] desperately lacked sign-posting.”
These reactions, it is clear, are mixed. They do not, of course, represent a scientific sampling of audience opinion but just those of a few viewers who replied to a request for comment on Twitter and Facebook.
The test of the movie's success will be whether, as a result of word-of-mouth, Atlas Shrugged – Part I does as well at the box office next weekend as it did during its first three days. That may determine if Parts II and III will be released as promised in 2012 and 2013.
Do you like this article? Do you want to see more like it? Be sure to click on the "subscribe" button at the top of the page.
If you would like to become an Examiner on Examiner.com, click on the "write for us" button on the upper right corner of this page.
Comments