“Atlas Shrugged, a mega-fable that is to capitalists roughly what To Kill a Mockingbird is to liberals[…]”—Kyle Smith, “Rand Old Time For Ayn Adherents,” New York Post, April 15, 2011
On a related note, Roy Edroso’s consideration of the film in question is really the only one you need read, unless at some point Tom Carson decides to torture himself and then weigh in. As for myself, I’m curious to see the thing, but a little jammed up, schedule-wise, this weekend. I do eagerly await the box office numbers, and Glenn Reynolds’ subsequent excuses for them.
Nice title 🙂
“… what To Kill a Mockingbird is to liberals.”
Equal protection under the rule of law and not a lynch mob, that’s considered a “liberal” concept now?
Also, ‘The Incredibles’ as well as Steve Ditko’s non-Marvel or DC work both manage to be far more entertaining and thought-provokingly Randian than any of Rand’s actual words.
It looks like the sort of God awful movie that can be enjoyable and fun. Will check it out on home video, for sure.
Sorry, Glenn. I’m not even sure I could face sitting through To Kill a Mockingbird again, so…
ATLAS SHRUGGED is one of the greatest science fiction novels of the 20th century.
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5276089/
I stopped reading when he said THE FOUNTAINHEAD was just a silly and operatic but perfectly entertaining film. It’s more like a masterpiece that happens to be based on an awful novel. And yes, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a liberal film, and a lousy one. What a commentary on American film culture that that film’s a beloved “classic,” while STARS IN MY CROWN just got a Warner Archive release and THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT is only available on DVD in Spain.
I have a feeling this film is going to bring out the worst in everybody.
Welp, I guess it’s time to cut myself off from society for a few weeks.
I’ve seen plenty of movies worse than TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
The phenomenon of becoming a “classic” has little if anything to do with “film culture,” American or otherwise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXxjtcd4-kw&feature=related
@Asher: I believe that in the sentence I cited Mr. Smith was refering the actual texts and not their respective film versions. Also, Jesus H. Christ.
@ Bill: Oh, come on. Lighten up. And while you’re lightening up, maybe you can explain to me when it became obligatory for intelligent conservatives to take Ayn Rand seriously. Don’t you guys remember Whittaker Chambers, for God’s sake?
I was already lightened up. It was a joke, you see. Plus also, it’s hardly obligatory. The last article I read about her was in the National Review and it was less than lauditory, and as for myself, I’ve never read her, and never will.
“Laudatory”, that is to say.
What can I tell you, Bill, I’ll take any excuse to say “Lighten up.” Makes me feel like Warren Oates.
You should do what I do when I want to feel like Warren Oates, and look for opportunities to ask “Do I still get paid?”
I don’t need to seek out those opportunities, alas. And when I say it, I hardly ever feel like Warren Oates.
When you say it, is it ever preceded by a massacre? I find that helps. Otherwise, well, I know what you mean.
I always feel like (lowercase) warren oates.
Years ago I was driving a first date home and she came out with one of those over-the-top personal inquiries you use to suss out someone, that you only ask when the lights drift by and you’re drifting on a little buzz yourself. Sum up your life kind of questions.
Which would have been the perfect opportunity, I realized even at the time, to tell her that all I know, if I don’t get grounded soon I’m going into orbit. But I didn’t.
Thanks for the nice night, I’ll see you soon, oh sorry I didn’t return your call, hey, how have you been I haven’t seen you in ages.
Never pass by a chance to feel like Warren Oates.
@Kent: “I’ve seen plenty of movies worse than TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.”
Yes. And The Fountainhead is one of them.
Roy Edroso’s blog is high on my list of Things That Make the Whole Damn Internet Worthwhile. As is this one, of course.
Sinister protesters carrying around MLK Jr signs. Jesus H. Christ, indeed.
Can we make the following, slightly more modest claim, based on the fact that before Kyle Smith’s review, the film had a 0 percent Rotten Tomatoes score (it’s at 8 as I type, which at least puts it in the general neighborhood of CATWOMAN and LEONARD PART 6).
If Rand’s novel and/or the film (I tried to read the former … emphasis on “tried”; no interest in the latter) had been similarly bad in every way but in service of a message liberals liked, it would have measurable (or possibly even significant) critical support, if not necessarily from Glenn or his more-esteemed commenters.
As evidence, I cite (1) all those respectfully-screened and often-award-garlanded Gibney-Ferguson-Spurlock et al issue documentaries; and (2) the 55 RT rating for THE CONSPIRATOR, which I did see it and is as preachily bad and ideologically overdetermined as all the bad ATLAS SHRUGGED reviews suggest.
uhmm..the conspirator could be a good example (from what ive heard, i havent seen it..lions for lambs is definetly a good example)…but alex gibney, charles ferguson and morgan spurlock documentaries? Where did that even come from? And what’s morgan spurlock doing there? You might want to change that example before your not unreasonable claim is perhaps unfairly derided
Pedro:
I’m confused about your confusion. Love em or hate em, all three men make films that support liberal ideas, yet are (in my view) intellectually vapid and (in many people’s views) aesthetically pedestrian. Thats a fairly precise analogy to ATLAS SHRUGGED and the Redford films. Yet those docs do well critically, by the (admittedly imperfect) measure of Rotten Tomatoes scores.
And why is Spurlock the odd man out among the three docmakers I cited (or more precisely, came up with on the fly). One might sanely think him the least of the three, and certainly he’s got a different tone and style from Gibney and Ferguson. But he fits the criteria for my analogy I spelled out above.
Whatever ideology they’re advocating, directors should remember the advice given in Gilbert Adair’s ‘Flickers’ (an excellent little read which Glenn has quoted from in another recent posting) – It’s not enough to have your heart in the right place, your camera has to be as well.
I haven’t seen “The Conspirator” yet but everyone I know who has—Trotskyites all, by the way—have informed me that I “dodged a bullet” on that one. The director being a known and in some vicinities beloved quantity, it’s entirely probable that he’s getting a pass from some critics…and that others are just liberal saps. By the same token, 55% is pretty shitty as Rotten Tomatoes ratings go. As for Gibney, Spurlock, and Ferguson…well, whatever. Film critics aren’t always as well-informed as they might be on certain issues, and the presentations of certain facts or perhaps quasi-facts contained within these fellows’ films might be of some appeal. (If I had more time I’d ask Mr. Morton to spell out precisely how “No End In Sight” is “intellectually vapid,” but that would also just be asking for trouble. As would be, for instance, asking both Andrew McCarthy and John Nolte to explain precisely what we are/are supposed to be doing in Iraq.) But none of those guys are Frederick Wiseman, that’s for damn sure. And for all that, I don’t get the point. “You liberals are nice to bad movies that espouse your world view, why can’t you be nicer to bad movies that don’t?” Really? That’s your complaint?
What a world. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just fucking shoot myself.
“No, I don’t think that’s his complaint,” he said, wondering if wading into this was really something he should do.
I don’t believe Victor wants anyone to be nicer to ATLAS SHRUGGED. I believe he wants consistency regarding when and for whom the knives are drawn. *COUGH COUGH HALF NELSON COUGH COUGH*
Hey, don’t look at me. I HATED “Half Nelson” with every fiber of my being and I don’t care who knows it. What was it Frank Zappa said on “Trouble Every Day?” “You know, I’m not black, but sometimes I’m ashamed to be white?” Yeah, “Half Nelson” made me feel like that. BUT NOT IN EXACTLY THE WAY ITS MAKERS INTENDED, if you get what I’m saying. On the other hand, “Half Nelson,” for all its faults, apparently has some qualities “Atlas Shrugged Part 1” is said to lack, particularly in the acting department.
“It would be easier to…laugh off the stilted dialogue and stern, unironic hectoring, so that’s what most viewers will do.” – Kyle Smith, New York Post. Quite a recommendation. And I have yet to hear or read anything positive about THE CONSPIRATOR.
Meanwhile, the left-wing conspiracy marches on. I ask you, where are the documentaries that place the financial crisis where it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of the borrowers and the Obama administration? Who will make the film that celebrates, rather than denigrates, the achievements and innovations of Enron? Or that portrays the invasion of Iraq in a positive light? I can certainly imagine those films, although I can’t imagine that they’d be very good: the motivation for making them would be on the paltry side, meant to counterbalance a “bias” that is itself a right-wing idea, and an extremely effective one at that. God knows that anyone who really is moved to make such a film wouldn’t lack for funding.
Personally, as someone whose viewpoint would be defined as left-wing, Morgan Spurlock means nothing to me. I never understood the point of SUPER SIZE ME and his “branding” project seems just as silly. Charles Ferguson movies seem like they’re meant for people who don’t read newspapers or listen to the radio, although the stuff about the business schools in the last one was interesting. I worked with Alex Gibney on the decidedly non-political Blues series (or so we thought), so I can’t really comment on his films. And then there’s Michael Moore, who did not place on Mr. Morton’s hit parade. For the most part, I find his films ridiculous and very poorly constructed, rigging the arguments to the point where they become completely ineffective. When I was on the New York Film Festival committee and we chose to not show BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, he behaved shamefully. As someone who lived in a town that suffered a fate similar to that of his beloved Flint, I thought ROGER AND ME was a travesty. I liked FAHRENHEIT 9/11 at the time but I doubt that I’d have much use for it if I saw it again. He’s been enormously influential on the documentary form, which is a shame. Goosing the audience along with music cues and ironic juxtapositions; seizing on the awkward moments and off-handed pomposities of the people he doesn’t like; bending chronology to suit the argument; assuming the position of the lone voice of reason and civility; relegating filmmaking itself to a secondary position – they’ve all spread like wildfire.
‘Quiz Show’ is surely Redford’s best film and surely the one most in need of a DVD remaster. ‘Downhill Racer’ (for all its atmospheric accomplishments) gets the Redford-approved Criterion treatment, and not this?
Oliver: Quiz Show is not only Redford’s best film, but it’s so good that I choose to believe it’s ghost-directed by someone more suited to the material. Maybe it’s Barry Levinson’s best film, or something. But I loved that movie so dearly that it puts me in a very lonely cult. It’s easy to quote Star Wars and have everyone pick up the reference; when you go around quoting Quiz Show, as I tried to do last week when ordering a Reuben sandwich, there are more blank stares.
Glenn, I’m not looking at you, I know full well your feelings about this sort of thing and HALF NELSON specifically. But I believe the topic was broached in a much more general way anyhow.
Joel – It’s not such a lonely cult. I’m part of it, for one thing, and any time I see QUIZ SHOW mentioned on-line – which granted isn’t that often – it gets nothing but love.
Glad to hear that there are people who not only like Quiz Show, but are devoted fans. I could talk about that movie all day, but I don’t want to hijack what is perhaps the least consequential political debate in the history of blogs.
QUIZ SHOW has aged very well and I’ve actually had a few people on occasion make a “You know what I just watched again? It’s really good” comment about the film to me.
Joel: I’m with you on QUIZ SHOW—every time I watch it, I think “How could Robert Redford have directed a movie this good?” But there are certainly tells that suggest it really was him, primarily that the scenes involving WASPs are thoughtfully made metaphorical (most obviously the scene where van Doren confesses to his father) and the scenes with Jews are straight up “put the camera there and let the actors make it happen”. It’s like he knew exactly what his strengths and weaknesses were, and for once adjusted accordingly.
Was Ralph Fiennes ever more handsome, Christopher McDonald and Martin Scorsese (as an actor) ever more smugly sinister, or the soundtrack’s use of ‘Mack the Knife’ ever more appropriate, than in this movie?
Hesitating to continue, lest Our Genial Host fucking shoot himself …
Glenn:
“ ‘You liberals are nice to bad movies that espouse your world view, why can’t you be nicer to bad movies that don’t?’ Really? That’s your complaint?”
That would be one possible takeaway, though, as Bill guessed, I actually more lean toward the inverse – that bad left-wing films should be treated with the same contempt and derision as bad right-wing films are. The RT scores show they manifestly are not.
And if you want trouble … read this by me; here from Toronto; and here at a Christian critics board. CLIENT 9 is intellectual pferdscheisse #derfact
Kent:
I specifically noted that the three men I named might not be liked by “Glenn or his more-esteemed commenters” (I actually had you at the forefront of my mind re the latter). You’re welcome to deride them. I do too (to make your head spin, I like Moore more than you do). But that doesn’t affect the facts about their respectful and/or enthusiastic critical reception more broadly.
Also, I don’t see what’s so mysterious about the point of SUPER-SIZE ME. Love it or hate it, it couldn’t be more transparently about Evil Corporation using marketing and lobbying to destroy the people (mostly “person” in the film, but in an era of fast-food obesity lawsuits, it’s obviously intended synecdochally).
IIRC, Mr. Soderbergh– highly-regarded chap around these parts, and rightfully so– had been preparing QUIZ SHOW before Redford swooped in and took it over. It’s interesting to speculate what Soderbergh, circa the early nineties, before he demonstrated that he had/has equal aptitude with both experimental and more mainstream fare, would have done with the material. As it stands, I, like many others here, admire Redford’s film very much. As someone who has had more than his share of class envy– in the strangely-drawn-to way, not the burning-with-anger way– I find it a particularly compelling portrait of that sort of thing. And of course that’s just one facet of many.
Speaking of films with Scofield that are really really good and don’t get much lip-service these days, and of films that feature to some degree burning ambition/class envy (in the film I’m about to mention, embodied quite ably and at once sympathetically and repulsively by John Hurt), not to bring this thread even further off-topic, but am I the only one who finds A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS unduly forgotten and vastly underrated? About the only contemporary person I’ve seen say something good about it is Kevin Smith, which doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.
Hmmm … links didn’t come through. Oh well.
Anyway, hijack the thread to talk about QUIZ SHOW, please.
While it was far superior to THE CONSPIRATOR (high bar to clear), I must say I didn’t care for it at the time in 1994, though I haven’t revisited it since then. It fit too snugly into my negative category of “movies about the past that congratulate Us for being smarter.” Also its participation in the McLuhan/Mander/Postman TV Will Destroy Everything meme, and thus also participates in the meme’s ahistoric nostalgia.
I guess “congratulate Us for being smarter” isn’t exactly what I meant; more like “congratulate Us for being born later and thus seeing their failings more clearly.”
Victor– while I disagree with you w/r/t QUIZ SHOW– I think it’s far subtler than that, and well worth a second look– I’ll say that bad films, regardless of stripe or agenda, should be derided, because they are bad, and that I think many documentaries– not necessarily political ones, either– get away with being shoddily-constructed, drab, talky, etc., simply because the subject matter is interesting or compelling. There’s a question, of course, of content vs. form (or, because that sounds biased against formalism, form vs. content)– is it possible, or enough, for a film to be worthwhile without actually being a good film?
Victor: Yeah, there are some lines at the end that are way too preachy about television, almost all of them in voice-over during the final couple of short, but the heart of the movie is about assimilation and upward mobility. Television is seen as the great democratic educator, if only as a way of convincing people like Van Doren to perpetrate the fraud, so in that sense the movie seems to say that we’re far, far less better than those folks back in the 50s.
But it’s the Jewish-assimilation stuff that gets to me, since the movie pretty much seems to take off from Philip Roth’s Van Doren obsessions in Zuckerman Unbound and Portnoy’s Complaint (where I’m pretty sure that Portnoy himself helps take down Van Doren or someone like him). Also, I cry every time I watch that Scofield-Fiennes scene in the classroom, with the father-professor literally lecturing to his son about something that the father simply can’t comprehend. Where has Paul Attanasio been since the mid-90s? Between this script and the one for Donnie Brasco, he had a brilliant knack for stories about epic self-deception. Does he still write scripts?
Like others, I’m a bit confused, but then again, I’m often confused when people clumsily attempt to make the liberal/conservative distinction re. movies. What about Spurlock’s stuff is “liberal?” That he makes the astonishing discovery that eating McDonald’s nonstop will poison you? That he funded an entire film using product placement? (I haven’t seen the latter, but I have watched the trailer.)
From an economic and foreign-policy standpoint, the labels “conservative” and “liberal” have effectively switched meanings from their original appearance in the discourse. Now, it is considered Liberal to oppose military intervention and preemptive war, and it is the self-described Conservatives who are advocating rampant deregulation and the bestowing of all kinds of extraordinary rights on the nonhuman entities known as corporations. (The exception of this might seem to be the recent coinage of “Neoliberal” economic policies – more deregulation, doing away with tariffs, etc. – but upon anything more than a cursory glacé, this quickly reveals itself to be following the same rule of opposites, since all of these NeoLiberal policies actually rely heavily on government subsidy and protection.)
Therefore, the only meaningful way that the Liberal vs. Conservative question can be discussed is in the arena often referred to as “lifestyle.” Which is to say, conservatives generally don’t like the fact that Hollywood seems interested in/accepting of gay people, drug use, abortion, etc. Even here, where I’m willing to concede certain “liberal” tendencies do exist, they are never as strong or pervasive as commentators like Nolte insist they are. Take the example of Apatow – does anyone seriously consider him to be emblematic of an overtly liberal attitude, especially on the question of marriage? Anyway, it’s at least something worth discussing, whereas in the economic or foreign policy realm, most exchanges don’t get very far.
Joel:
My 17-year-old memory is that the anti-TV screed really took over as the film progressed and that I walked out disgusted. (I went in primed to like the film, which Siskel & Ebert praised to the skies, on more or less the terms you described. Gene called “a rare American film of ideas.”) And unfair as this is to QUIZ SHOW, I must add that Redford’s subsequent directorial works (and public persona) haven’t exactly caused me to rethink my skepticism. Maybe I will soon.
Tom:
There’s no doubt that documentaries always have had the ability in critics minds to overcome formal indifference by showing us real worlds or material that we never could see personally or might not even know about. Within reason though, that latter is legitimately part of the appeal of documentaries, from almost the beginning – NANOOK OF THE NORTH, BERLIN: CITY SYMPHONY, LAS HURDES, THE RIVER all at least somewhat offer a kind of exotic tourism despite being far less accomplished cinematically than more-or-less contemporaries such as Vertov and Riefenstahl. The current trend isn’t really information in that sense, it’s rather more like illustrated essays, where the film’s raison d’être is a (usually leftist in the status quo, but let that go for here and now) political/social argument without much or any human or dramatic interest.
Why am I not the least bit surprised that the Venn diagram for ‘Those who think liberals are piling on ‘Atlas Shrugged” and ‘Those whose teenage selves self-righteously got themselves all worked up over ‘Quiz Show” has such a singular intersection?
“Why am I not the least bit surprised that the Venn diagram for ‘Those who think liberals are piling on ‘Atlas Shrugged”…”
Yes. That is precisely the point that has been made. In no way are you completely and utterly wrong.
Boy, touchy, touchy touchy. Knock yourselves out, everybody. But remember, this morning, for your sins and mine, I had to see “Water For Elephants.” You guys can argue ceaselessly here because one rough man stands ready to have violence done to his eyes and ears on your behalf. Just sayin’.
Well, if LIKE WATER FOR ELEPHANTS isn’t gonna cause you to fucking shoot yourself …
Palin in ’12!!!!
Oh, come on, Victor. As Daffy Duck said in “Birth of a Notion,” “Now that’s just plain silly.”
But I’m a little wounded. Sometimes it’s as if you WANT me to hurt myself. Why…why?
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out why it goes “touchy, touchy touchy.” There’s an odd cadence to that which simply hypnotizes me.
I was sort of hoping that WATER FOR ELEPHANTS would be good because a) Christoph Waltz, and b) the circus! But I had very serious doubts that my hopes would be fulfilled.
Glenn, of course I don’t you want you to hurt yourself. It might make you very angry, and you would do terrible, horrible things to me.
Victor, the idea that the Gibney and Ferguson movies are objectively bad, end of score, seems questionable at best. They indulge in alot of the rhetorical stuff I mentioned above, but “bad?” And then, I guess that leads to some notion that critics watch the movies, recognize a “liberal” point of view, and…what? Stop thinking critically? Leave the screening early so they can get home to uphold the “liberal media bias?” And then, precisely which Gibney movies are you talking about? A muckraker like ENRON or an out-and-out indictment like THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, with the charge to arrest Kissinger as a war criminal led by none other than Mr. “I’m-Glad-We-Liberated-Iraq” himself, Christpher Hitchens, and co-authored by Eugene Jarecki, who would later rehabilitate Eisenhower as a prophet in WHY WE FIGHT. Are we really going to look back at Ken Lay or Henry Kissinger in retrospective awe? As for the Ferguson, again: what’s the problem and why is it specifically “liberal?” I have yet to hear anyone make a case for the rampant packaging and trading of CDOs as a worthwhile undertaking that benefits the community. Phil Gramm tried it and he sounded more idiotic than usual. I’m not especially fond of the film, but playing fast and loose with the facts is not one of its issues. And where exactly are all the marvelous and impassioned right-wing documentaries meant to counter this liberal bias? When you’re obsessed with evening the score, you don’t make documentaries (unless you want to count something like STOLEN HONOR). You start Fox News, The Heritage Foundation, or a radio talk show. Or a genuinely absurd website like Big Hollywood, where you can read Michael Moriarty explaining why CASABLANCA is communist propaganda.
Kent:
Glenn made it reasonably clear earlier in this thread that he would rather not see me and others suck up oxygen and bandwidth on ideological debates.
Suffice to say that, to use your words, “critics watch the movies, recognize a liberal point of view, and stop thinking critically” is pretty much what I think generally happens. I reviewed the sloppy and tendentious (but 91% fresh) CLIENT 9 at my site, most of which points don’t specifically depend on a libertarian or Randian POV (which, as a religious nut, I don’t have anyway). If you’d like to go into more detail without vexing Glenn, we can do so there.
http://vjmorton.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/tiff-10-capsules-day‑5/