I like the actors. Opinions on the film tend to focus on what it should have been, rather than what it is. So I'm wondering: is it worth seeing on its merits?
shareThe acting, sets and costumes are terrific. I knew very little about Rand before seeing it, so it was an interesting story to me.
Rachel
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A movie or book written by someone against the main character (like this one)will always draw him/her as a bad person. This movie is not objective, is based in the ideas of someone that disliked her.
shareI have read some of the novels of Rand, but I didn't know anything about her private life, so I found this really interesting. She could be manipulative and hard, and as she defended in her books, she could be essentialy egoistic. Her ideology is mixed with the story of her love relationship towards a married man in a kind of open-marriage deal with their respective spouses.
The acting is superb, and the cast is incredible. Everything is well-done, even the blurry-camera technic when Barbara Branden has a fit in the phone booth. The captions for the passing of time informed well, to tell you the truth, but I wonder if they were really necessary, as the progression in the love/sexual story is well-shown so as not to present abrupt interruptions.
All in all, I liked it.
Thank you! I've seen it lon gago by now. The movie presented her in a very negative light. I don't know if it was fair to reality. But I still like her ideas.
shareI think Helen Mirren and the rest of the cast does a very fine job considering the material.
The characters of Ayn Rand and Nathan are not at all sympathetic characters, but maybe that's the appeal. I felt more sympathy for Ayn's husband and Nathan's wife who seemed to be the victims of a cult leader and bully.
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@ ZombiHorndog - Please explain in what ways a supposedly intelligent and rational thinker like Ayn Rand was "exploited?"
She and Nathan were cult leaders and a demagogues pure and simple.
It will depend on who you talk to. To the Randroids, it will be blasphemy. Ayn Rand is shown as being a nasty, selfish, manipulative, mean woman. The fact is, she was. The woman was very unpleasant, did not have many friends, (as she considered most people beneath her) and treated people like dirt. In the first scene of the movie as people line up to view her body, the funeral director asks that people please move quickly out of consideration of the many people in line, and one of the characters remarks that Rand would have thoroughly disapproved. She would have thought that consideration for others was just stupid. There are many people who find Rand to be a great philosopher or prophet. I have never heard anyone describe her as a nice person. Stories of her meanness, pettiness and cruelty however, are plentiful.
Personally, I thought the movie did a very good job of telling the story, and the performances were excellent. Of course, Helen Mirren is excellent in just about anything, but Peter Fonda really impressed me. He did not look at all like the guy who starred in Easy Rider. (Come to think of it, the irony of having him play Rand's husband is hysterically funny.)
Well I like Rand and much of her philosophy, although both had flaws, and also like Barbara Branden, especially for her fair and compassionate biography of Rand; the movie is OK, even without comparison to the book the portrayals of the people feel a little rushed but still interesting.
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