ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART 1

This fictional film is based on Ayn Rand’s book of the same name. While I’ve read some reviews that say Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (2011; PG) is not exciting or is even boring, I did not find it to be so.

As we follow the characters through this film, we are caught wondering who John Galt really is. He seems to be a mystery man. His face is never shown. He approaches and enlists various bright and creative individuals --- thinkers, if you will – to join him and leave everything behind. In the meantime, railroad tycoon Dagny Taggart is fighting against all odds to build a railroad. She is already heir to a railroad which she runs with her brother, but everyone from high government officials on down are trying to make laws, rules, and regulations that will prevent any one company owner from enjoying the fruits of his or her own labor by limiting the number of companies that may be owned and by taking other enterprises away or so severely regulating them that they just can’t do business anymore. So, she has broken away from her father’s company and is building on her own.

Federal laws are enacted to “spread the wealth” with equality, regardless of who actually earns what. They are also enacted to impede any progress by saying this or that is dangerous or not in the public’s best interest. Taggart and her steel producing friend run into every kind of obstacle as they use a new formula steel to lay tracks and build a bridge, and even more as they try to recreate a new engine for the trains that doesn’t depend on fossil fuel.

This story wasn’t written in the past couple of years. It was written in 1957, fifty years before the rigorous rules and regulations we know of today ever came into existence.

Watch it, and weep.

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