Jul 302010
 

Sweet Jesus. Govindini Murty (GM) of Libertas Film Magazine interviews the director of the new Atlas Shrugged movie, Paul Johansson (PJ):

GM: To return to the themes of the novel. Do you think the characters are beyond good and evil, beyond morality in a Nietzschean sense?

PJ: I really believe that. I really believe that.

GM: That they’re these Promethean, Titanic figures who are above such things?

PJ: I really believe that. Rand uses a lot of things like good and evil in her text but I don’t think she really believed those ideas. It’s like what Oscar Wilde said … I don’t know the exact quote – he said that a book can either be poorly written or well written, but it can’t be evil.

GM: But the novel has that Nietzschean overtone to it.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ayn Rand didn’t write about good and evil for mere decoration. As she said in the postscript to Atlas Shrugged: “And I mean it.” Seriously, go read her essay “The Objectivist Ethics” if you’re unsure about her ethics. Don’t attempt to make a movie on the assumption that she was just kidding.

Addendum: A friend of mine said:

Watch the video version. He is just eager to please and won’t disagree with any of the leading questions the interviewer feeds him. My impression is that he has no ideas at all and is desperate to sound like he does. This is what you would expect from someone with no directing experience, desperate to sound like he has some. One way or the other this movie is going to be particularly bad.

I’ve not watched the video, as I’ve had more important work on my plate, but that sounds plausible to me.

(Via John Day.)

   
Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha