Dagny and Hank ride blissfully in Taggart’s new high-speed train, and then Hank suggests they take a trip to Wisconsin, where the state’s policies caused the suppression of an engine that runs on the ozone in the air, or something (the film’s detailed explanation won’t clear this up). This may be disappointing for libertarians, who I believe enjoy rumpy-pumpy as much as anyone. There is also a love scene, which is shown not merely from the waist up but from the ears up.
The movie is constructed of a few kinds of scenes: (1) People sipping their drinks in clubby surroundings and exchanging dialogue that sounds like corporate lingo (2) railroads, and lots of ’em (3) limousines driving through cities in ruin and arriving at ornate buildings (4) city skylines (5) the beauties of Colorado. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining? It’s not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Rarely, perhaps never, has television news covered the laying of new railroad track with the breathless urgency of the news channels shown in this movie. "Atlas Shrugged" seems to buy into the fair’s glowing vision of the future of trains. They didn’t quite foresee mass air transportation. When I was 6, my Aunt Martha brought me to Chicago to attend the great Railroad Fair of 1948, at which the nation’s rail companies celebrated the wonders that were on the way. Just to show you how bad things have become, a government minister announces "a tax will be applied to the state of Colorado, in order to equalize our national economy." So you see how governments and unions are the enemy of visionary entrepreneurs.īut you’re thinking, railroads? Yes, although airplanes exist in this future, trains are where it’s at. The Union of Railroad Engineers has decided it will not operate Dagny’s trains. Dagny’s new steel, which is produced by her sometime lover, Hank Rearden ( Grant Bowler), has been legislated against because it’s better than other steels. Laws have been passed prohibiting companies from owning other companies.
America has become a state in which mediocrity is the goal, and high-achieving individuals the enemy. Vast forces seem to conspire against her. She is a fearless and visionary entrepreneur, who is determined to use a revolutionary new steel to repair her train tracks. The story involves Dagny Taggart ( Taylor Schilling), a young woman who controls a railroad company named Taggart Transcontinental (its motto: "Ocean to Ocean"). Much of the excitement centers on the tensile strength of steel. There are conversations in English after which I sometimes found myself asking, "What did they just say?" The dialogue seems to have been ripped throbbing with passion from the pages of Investors’ Business Daily.
More wine is poured and sipped in this film than at a convention of oenophiliacs.