Atlas of the Silver Screen?

At a time when government has ever increasing control over private business and achievement is demonized and punished, what are individuals with drive and ambition to do? That is the basic question of Atlas Shrugged , the fourth and final novel written by Ayn Rand. Published in 1957, she considered this 1,100 page work to be her fiction magnum opus.

         With the firing of executives and the takeover of banks, GM and AIG by the government the writings of Ayn Rand, particularly Atlas Shrugged, are more relevant today than they were forty plus years ago when they were written. Like Rand, I believe in individualism, limited government and laissez-faire economics. If you don’t want to read her non-fiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness, I strongly recommend her fiction works. Anthem, a dystopian novel set in the future, you may have read in high school or college. If not, read it now, and then move up to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In the longest chapter of the later novel, John Galt, a central character of the book, explains Rand’s Objectivism philosophy.

          In her early years Rand worked as a screenwriter and talk of a movie version of Atlas Shrugged has been around for decades. With sales of the novel growing, a film adaptation might soon start production. According to the Internet Movie Database, Angelina Jolie has been cast as Dagny Taggart but, I'm told she may be pregnant and the production status is currently listed as, "unknown."

          I like to go to the movies and I like to see significant literature turned into meaningful cinema. However, I am often disappointed. All too often great literature is made into awful movies. Literature that stands the test of time reveals some truth about the world while telling a compelling human story. In movies we sometimes get the human drama without the context of the deeper truth the author was attempting to show. Often we get a mishmash of both that, for the viewer, becomes a tasteless gruel.

          The Hollywood liberal mindset is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Ayn Rand as illuminated in Atlas Shrugged. Can the screenwriters, directors, produces and actors subordinate their personal prejudices and create a movie worthy of the novel? I hope so, but I just don’t think so.

Nevertheless, I’ll keep checking on this project and post updates.