Atlas Shrugged – The movie!

 

Well… yet again, I’ll stand by what I always believed in – never watch a movie based on your favourite book. Barring Godfather and Gone with the wind, there is not a single movie which brings justice to the book.

But still, if it is a movie based on your favourite book, it would take immense and senseless will power to not watch it. And that is exactly why I subjected myself to this movie, based on my forever favourite book (so much so that I even once had a blog with the name – Who is John Galt?, and a blogger nickname of Ms Taggart).

For starters, even I am glad that they decided to go with two parts of the movie, only that way could they even try to bring justice to the extremely verbose ~1200 page novel , cast in the smallest font. But then, the point that a movie will never live up to the detail and description that a book will feed to  your imagination turns out to be true in this case.

There are couple of good points in the movie – like it being set in 2016, and a time of great depression. Well, we are in the almost-great-depression right now, and the references to the oil spill, the Dow-Jones index falling everyday, against-capitalism attempts by some governments make perfect sense for this times.

However, where the movie fails in its logic is , why would a railroad mean so important for the survival of a state even in 2016. Its not like the 40’s which is when the book is set that trains were the only means of reaching out into the interiors of the state.

The movie fails in areas where it is supposed to make a mark, like showing Dagny’s never-say-die attitude , or her childhood friendship with d’Anconia, her passion with Hank Rearden, or when John Galt comes to take away each of the Titans.

Also, the movie seemed unnecessarily fast-paced which is why most of the important scenes felt like they were rushed.

Watch the movie if you are a fan of the book, but keep in mind that this will not stand up to the world the book has created in your mind. Watch it only to see an effort to make a great book into a movie. A not-so-great effort.

Comments

  1. When I saw the movie's poster, I wondered what you would think about it :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aww... you remembered that I love the book... :)

    ReplyDelete

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