History was made last Friday when “Atlas Shrugged,” the first installment of a planned trilogy, finally hit movie theaters after a decades-long struggle to bring Ayn Rand’s iconic novel to the screen. Unfortunately. the resulting film is a botched adaptation that feels silly, histrionic and completely devoid of the intellectual backbone and dystopian gravity that sustained the original.
“Atlas Shrugged” depicts a decaying American society where, one by one, its leading innovators and producers disappear in protest of increasing government control over industry and the prevalence of shameless freeloaders. Against this backdrop, the protagonist Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling), as one of the few remaining individualists, struggles to keep her family’s railroad company afloat. Dagny’s closest allies are her devoted assistant Eddie Willers (Edi Gathegi) and her lover, fellow industrialist Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler). Meanwhile, the moochers include her own brother James (Matthew Marsden), Rearden’s rival Orren Boyle (Jon Polito) and Washington lobbyist Wesley Mouch (Michael Lerner).
While the book takes place at an unspecified time, the lack of modern technology as well as the global political instability strongly evokes the era in which it was published, the late 1950s. In adapting “Atlas Shrugged,” however, screenwriter Brian Patrick O’Toole and producer John Aglialoro set events in the near future, wherein the reliance on trains for transportation is explained by an unprecedented oil crisis that makes the use of cars too expensive. This perhaps would have been plausible if they had also decided to modernize the rest of the screenplay.
For those unfamiliar with the original, Rand wrote her book using the characters as thinly veiled vehicles for her political philosophy, which for objectivity’s sake translates to decidedly unemotional dialogue. This is difficult enough to endure in a 1000-plus page novel. In a 100-minute movie, it is downright painful. Presumably in an effort to remain faithful to Rand’s work, the screenwriters copied many of the characters’ lines verbatim. This may have passed if the movie were set decades earlier, but instead it creates an awkward and irreconcilable rift between what is said and what is seen.
Aglialoro first purchased the movie rights to the book in 1992, but found that studios were unwilling to produce it, as they believed the material to be unsuitable for film. With the rights set to soon revert back to Rand’s estate, Aglialoro, almost in homage to the spirit of the book, decided to go the independent route largely through his own financial backing. To put it lightly, there are ways of working within a tight budget such that the audience is unaware of it, but sadly, this is not the case with “Atlas Shrugged.” From the stock footage to the visual effects (particularly the famed Rearden Metal), “Atlas Shrugged” looks and feels cheap. Perhaps the change of setting to the year 2016 was less an attempt to modernize the story and more a budgetary cop-out.
Directed by Paul Johansson, whose previous credits include several episodes of One Tree Hill, and featuring a similarly unknown cast, “Atlas Shrugged” could have been a great launching pad for numerous careers. The acting, however, is passable at best — but when the script lacks emotional depth, it’s difficult to know whether the blame lies more with the writers or the actors. The most contrived element, by far, is John Galt, the story’s centerpiece who leads the intellectual boycott of the top producers against the rest of the world. In the movie, Galt appears as a shadowy figure that lures leading industrialists away through speeches that, unlike those in the book, are laughable rather than moving.
If the material had been in other hands with more time and money, maybe “Atlas Shrugged” could have been saved. But alas, the art of adaptation is much more nuanced than simple cut-and-paste. Looking forward, one can only hope that the reception of the first film will deter production of parts two and three.