Atlas Shrugged Part One: I’ve Seen It. It’s Awesome.

I just attended the pre-release screening of Atlas Shrugged Part One, and I’d like to share my first impressions. Take this as an initial installment toward the much more thoughtful (but equally enthusiastic) review I’ll compose at leisure over the next few days and publish at the (fan-run, unofficial) Atlas Shrugged Movie Blog.

When I heard my favorite novel was being made into a movie, all the available omens boded ill: a “low-budget” production, with “no-name” stars, made independently – without the adult supervision of a real Hollywood studio, and rushed into production at the last minute to avoid loss of rights. It sounded like a recipe for disaster. Scratch that… it WAS a recipe for disaster. I mourned the might-have-been movie I’d been waiting my entire adult life to see. I regretted the lost opportunity. I averted my eyes to avoid the painfully unfolding train wreck.

Slowly the evidence began chipping away at my erroneous conclusions.

As filming wrapped, I came across an account of a visit to the set at the Soul of Atlas Blog. Seeing Ragnar Danneskjold in the headlines brought home to me the reality of the production, but I remained doubtful the producers could overcome the hurdles they faced. Months later, I encountered the Atlas Shrugged Movie Facebook Fanpage. Behind-the-scenes photos of the actors, the props, and the sets demonstrated that, however modest the budget, this was a serious undertaking with credible production values (Atlas Shrugged (Part One) – A Movie Preview). An inquiry through the Atlas Shrugged Movie Fanpage requesting permission to reproduce the photos led to an in-depth discussion with screenwriter Brian O’Toole (Interview with Brian O’Toole, Screenwriter: Atlas Shrugged-Part One). O’Toole impressed me as a talented writer doing his conscientious best. In collaboration with producer John Aglialoro, O’Toole brought his considerable skills to capture the essence of Ayn Rand’s novel and translate it to screen. I was “cautiously optimistic.”

I began to understand – as I should have from the start – that independence is a virtue. Ayn Rand’s challenging prose would never have made it through the filter of a major studio without having been seriously blunted and adulterated. The resulting film would have been a caricature, not a capturing of the novel.

Further, a modest budget enforces an austere simplicity that enhances, rather than dilutes the message. A film with the “big-name” stars variously associated with the project over the years would have been more about the stars than the story. I admit that, in my mind’s eye, I always envisioned an Atlas Shrugged movie as an elaborately stylized visual blending of 1930′s vintage art-deco technology and film noir set in a pseudo-1950′s world with hardboiled, chain-smoking heroes. The film I foolishly thought I wanted would have been a tragic mistake – a mistake that would have transformed Atlas Shrugged into fantasy and undercut the dramatic relevance of Ayn Rand’s ideas to a modern setting. The Spartan, contemporary production is set in the near future, but that quality only serves to make the message more relevant and the story the star.

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