Atlas Shrugged Part 1 — a review.

Atlas Shrugged Part I – a review.

By Deborah Durkee

If you haven’t read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or haven’t read it lately, please be patient with the beginning of the new movie version. There are a lot of characters to flesh out, but once that is done, the movie becomes an intriguing battle of wills among those in the private sector and the public sector (also a union boss). Add to that the mystery of accomplished, well-known business leaders and other innovators disappearing overnight from their jobs and companies, leaving holes in other companies’ abilities to get their products made or delivered, and we have a mystery on top of a political thriller. Part of that mystery is the odd question that keeps popping up – Who is John Galt?

What makes this movie relevant is its reflection of our country’s present situation. Even though the book was written 50 years ago, the movie has been updated to take place in the United States in 2017. Rand was born and raised in the Soviet Union and brought her experiences here to warn our country of what happens when individual achievement is squelched by collective power brokers.

Men are out of work. Cities look like present-day Detroit with trash floating along the roadside, burned-out cars reside down the block from company buildings such as Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, where the female protagonist, Dagney Taggart, pulls up in a stretch limo. She’s trying to keep her company afloat while her progressive, crony-capitalist brother, James, uses the company as his personal piggy bank to gain political influence and make himself feel good for supposedly doing good at the same time draining the company of its profits.

Another main character is Hank Rearden of Rearden Metal who has created a new steel alloy that can help Dagney save her crumbling railroad infrastructure and keep her company afloat. Rearden has to fight a government at every turn. They try to “buy” his metal from him and when that doesn’t work they use the media and a “scientific board” to trash it. (Does that sound like Global Warming?) Rearden and Dagney must jump through bureaucratic hoops, fight a union boss for workers to complete the project, and break through many, many other roadblocks. It’s a real-life depiction of how government attempts to lord over those who help make society function.

This is one of the few movies in my memory to actually champion the creators and doers instead of the “Mr. Smith” in Washington, who really ends up more times than not being a combination of Bernie Madoff and the Godfather or a combination of Barney Frank and Barack Obama. The press, too, gets its share of blame as they always champion a progressive politician over a person who actually creates anything that produces a profit.

As you watch Rearden and Dagney (along with an oil company owner) try their best to get their products to where they can benefit themselves, which in turn benefits the American people, I was reminded of the cap and trade fiasco that is being perpetrated right now, without the benefit of a law being passed by Congress, but by fiat of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, and the destruction that will be wreaked on not just every company in the country, but every American. Or Obama preventing our own oil companies from drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska and many other places in the country, putting the survival of our country at risk for his indescribable ideology.

If you’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in Washington, D.C., especially in the last couple of years, just project that out to its eventual inevitability, and you have Atlas Shrugged. Everyone should see this movie. It needs your support. If it does well, they will make Atlas II, due out next year at the same time, then Atlas III the following year. Spread the word. It’s in theaters now. Make plans to see it. You can find a theater near you here: http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters

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