BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

TeenzTen An action-packed slog

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Schatz87 A documentary that appeals to insouciant libertarians, neophytes in economics, and everything in between. The filmmakers have succeeded in amassing an impressive range of political hacks and starry-eyed apostles that are more than willing to espouse their unbridled adulation of Rand. Viewers are richly rewarded with both a flattering homage to the person Ayn Rand as well as receiving a treat of mental masturbation to her philosophical ideas.The two interviewees with more substantive understanding are Jennifer Burns and Anne C. Heller, which both have written purportedly comprehensive books on the topic. All in all the documentary briefly touches upon Rands privileged childhood in Russia, semi-forced escape to the US in the mid-1920s, to the harsh criticism in the media after the publication of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism and her magnum opus are slightly expanded upon, while all critical viewpoints are conspicuously absent. Moreover, what is further lacking is any discussion of the character flaws and hypocrisy Rand displayed in her personal life.The main problem with the implied prophesy of the novel - and the most crucial piece that Rand got completely backwards - was the expected cronyism of the "big government". In reality the problem in US was always an exceptionally strong and overpowering private sector, which has been able to water down regulations and any attempts to rein in its power. This has concerned everything from a lax oversight of Wall Street, to curbing polluting industries, to ensuring America has became inundated with guns and fire arms, to an ever-mushrooming military-industrial complex... At the core the problem was never the naive and idiotic fantasy of secretive government churning out Soylent Green, but an unhinged private sector that won every battle against ordinary people by a cadre of K-Street lobbyists, bought republican politicians, and well-funded media campaigns propagating misinformation.In fact, after the global meltdown of financial markets in 2008 even the ex-fed chairman Alan Greenspan, the early disciple Ayn Rand ever since the 1950s, had to admit that the outcome of a free, unregulated market was complete financial disaster.Finally, what clearly detracts from the documentary is having an entire conveyor belt of asinine opinions and mind-boggling ignorance regurgitated by a series of ever dumber pea-brained minions.

Robert J. Maxwell I'd been hoping for a more or less balanced account of Ayn Rand's life and her influential novel, "Atlas Shrugged." It's getting harder to ignore both of them, what with our current Vice Presidential candidate having become a convert to objectivism in his youth.It was a disappointing movie, coming across as a hagiography, something like the life of Jesus. Ayn Rand, a Russian émigré, seems to have predicted the panic that grips so many of us today. There's a lot of philosophical fluff, and some of her writing is nicely done, but you know what's at the heart of our despair? Too many regulations, that's what.The world is divided into creators and looters. There are those who make and those who take. The government is the chief taker and its instruments are tax collectors and Wall Street thugs. The government imposes regulations and then imposes regulators on the regulations and it all multiplies like cancer cells. Among the looters would have to be counted those of us on food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, anyone who received help from Mother Theresa. That's about it. If it begins to sound a little familiar -- "Let's free the job creators", and so forth -- that's because it is. I DID say the philosophy was "influential."Rand, judging from what I've read elsewhere, was a more complex, and a more interesting person than this well-done propaganda gives her credit for. Her philosophy attracted a number of bright and eager young people in the 1950s and Rand became a sort of cult leader, tolerating little in the way of dissent. She bedded one or two of the more devoted males, with which I find absolutely nothing wrong, and threw out some dissidents. I didn't recognize any of the many talking heads. I'm not a philosopher nor a follower of any, except for a loose commitment to science and a notion of humanitarianism that's rapidly becoming antiquated. I guess I'd have been dismissed from the group. I think, though, that I may have heard of Harry Binswanger. He's a smart guy. He was teaching at CUNY at the same time I was. But I don't think any discussion with him would be very fruitful because he's so orthodox. For instance, he would throw open the borders of the United States and allow all the immigrants to flood the country. Ayn Rand, after all, was herself an immigrant. And Binswanger wouldn't worry about terrorism. If there were a threat from, say, Iran, he'd invade and conquer the country and eliminate the threat. Simple, no?There's a recurring problem with straightforward and simple analyses of the world around us, however appealing they might sound. The problem is that the world hasn't been structured in a way that's deliberately designed to facilitate our understanding of it. It's pretty complicated. That's one of the reasons it seems to me that charter documents like the Constitution are worded so vaguely. It's good that they're inexact. They can be interpreted in ways that fit the problems of the times. Imagine if one of the Ten Commandments read, "Thou shallt not allow any money-lending institution with a capital base of more than ten thousand shekels to lend money at a rate greater than 3.6 percent per annum." Imagine if the Second Amendment read, "No guns allowed for any citizen under any circumstances." Imagine a philosophy that says flatly, "Let's get rid of taxes and make the government impotent."Eric Fromm once observed that thinking was an irritant and it was Charles Sanders Peirce who defined "belief" as "thought, at rest."

gitardood Most reviewers focus on the so-called "battle" between altruism and selfishness as Rand saw it. Methinks, that both Rand and most reviewers tried to hard to stake out a mutually exclusive territory and defend it. For me, I think that the state should not be compelling via taxation or any other means at their disposal, the populace to be their brother's keeper. Where I part ways with Atlas Shrugged, is selfishness is not a virtue. If those who would like to see an end to gov't sponsored socialism, would realise that individuals then become responsible like the Good Samaritan, for helping the less fortunate, in such a way as to not create dependency on hand outs, then possibly the edifice of state sponsored "charity" ie taxes to "aid" the less fortunate, could be eliminated. Even the Bible says we are to help without encouraging dependency and indolence.

blountinstrument This documentary does a good job of capturing Rand's ideas and philosophy - missing in the movie that came out last year. It starts out with the idea that the events of the novel are being played out in real life today. Then it drops back in history to show how Ayn Rand escaped from communist Russia and came to America in the 1920's. But when she finally got here and the Depression started, how surprised she was to hear American intellectuals claiming that things were so much better in Russia with communism being the answer for everything. But Rand knew differently. She knew that the 1930's under Stalin saw tens of millions murdered or starving and forced to work in labor camps. Rand spent her career making it crystal clear - especially in Atlas Shrugged - that collectivism in any form is inherently evil and inevitably leads to disaster.The documentary also focuses on Rand's contention that the so-called virtues of altruism and self-sacrifice are misguided and that this willingness - so ingrained now in progressive western thinking - to subjugate the individual to the collective is not only most responsible for our country's current woes but it is this same twisted sense of morality that ultimately leads to totalitarianism.This is a film with a lot of information and insight that can easily be viewed more than once.