The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)

Passion is not one of those words usually associated with the controversial author Ayn Rand, unless one is speaking of her controversial ideas. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged made egoism a virtue, and her philosophy of objectivism, which she defiantly trumpeted in the face of criticism, proclaimed self-interest was a patriotic virtue. For 15 years she also used her philosophy to justify an affair with her "intellectual heir" (as she proclaimed him) Nathaniel Branden. This made-for-cable drama, based on the memoir by Barbara Branden (Nathaniel's wife), hones in on this clash between her ideas and her emotions. Helen Mirren is sharp and intense as the demanding, often icy Rand, playing down her striking features to become severe and plain. Eric Stoltz brings an insidious mix of charm and calculation to Nathaniel, a sycophantic devotee who espouses the gospel of intellectual honesty while compromising himself at every turn. Peter Fonda and Julie Delpy are the wounded spouses who endure their open affair. It's an unusually handsome film for a cable production, and the cool jazz score beautifully sets both the era and the mood of the film. Director Christopher Menaul, who previously directed Mirren in the brilliant British miniseries Prime Suspect, is fascinated by the hypocrisies justified by love and jealousy. While he's critical of Rand's philosophy and the cultlike following it spawns, he is nonetheless respectful of her intellect and devotion to her ideas, contradictions and all. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

Hypocrisy On Rand's Part

I was a student of Ayn Rand's philosophy and a patient of Mr. Branden's several decades ago, in the early 70's. Why? Because I was trying in vain to live as Ms. Rand said we should: as heroic figures every day, perfect in our morals, that we should aspire to be as perfect as the impossibly perfect,cold, robotic main characters of her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shugged. The only book of hers I read several times was We The Living as the characters were most like flesh and blood and real.

While I was going to Group at Mr. Branden's house I had no idea that he'd had an affair with Ayn Rand as it was apparently known only to some insiders I'd guess. Had I known, I would have immediately ended the relationship. As it was he was totally ineffectual as a therapist, barely able to stay awake while we spoke, and like comic shrinks in movies, lets you answer your own questions when you're paying HIM to! Years later, 15 free minutes with Dr. Laura on the radio fixed the problem I had (guilt over the death of a family member.)

The upside of all this:I did know Patrecia who was changed to another fictional woman in the movie. She was a Goddess. All the men loved her, all the women wanted to BE her. She was the essence of joy and life and she died way too young....slight epilepsy that was caused by strobing sunlight dancing off the pool whereupon she had a seizure and fell into the water, drowning.

Now I see that the high moral standards we underlings were supposed to uphold were completely tossed out the window by Ms. Rand and Mr. Branden. Barbara Brandon's book also reported that Ms. Rand was often under the influence of some seriously strong amphetamines and I'm sure if she saw I had done the same thing , she'd have blasted me for not having the moral courage to go through life without artificial courage.

I admire Ms. Rand for her works and her diligent fight against Communism (she is reeling in her grave at where our country stands now!), but it turned out to be do as I say, not as I do. I wasted a lot of years trying to be what she thought we should all aspire to. We can't. It's an impossibility. We are human, with human frailties which she and Nathaniel obviously both succumbed to. You just can't change Nature, which Ayn hated because she only loved that which was man-made. You can take some of this philosophy, but toss out what isn't right for you, otherwise you're a round peg in a very tight, painful square hole.

I believe this movie was a hatchet job to discredit her as she always stated:

"The best way to destroy greatness is to celebrate the mediocre." Or words to that affect.

Just look at who eats up all the news 7 days a week: Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsey, Anna-Nicole, etc, ad nauseum!

Atlas Shrugged is rumored to be in the works with Angelina Jolie, but don't hold your breath. September 30, 2008

The other side of Objectivism

Having read "The Fountainhead", "Atlas Shrugged" and "Anthem", I found Ayn Rand's ideas (which can basically be summed up as selfishness is good) to be of interest, but I always wondered about how they would work outside the artificial environment of fiction. "The Passion of Ayn Rand" answered this question for me. Through this film it is possible to see the consequences of living a life following the principles set out by Rand, and watching it confirmed my suspicions that Objectivism (Rand's philosophy) is not all its cracked up to be.

"The Passion of Ayn Rand" is a bio-pic about the life of Russian-American author, Ayn Rand (Helen Mirren), focussing on her relationship with Nathaniel (Eric Stoltz) and Barbara Branden (Julie Delpy). Although both were married, Nathaniel Branden and Rand had an affair that went on for 14 years. During the affair, Rand named Nathaniel Branden as her "intellectual heir", but this changed when the affair ended under acrimonious circumstances.

This is a very well made film with excellent actors in all parts. Each of the actors manages to inhabit his or her part to the point where, by the end of the film, I genuinely felt that I was watching the real historical figures, rather than just actors. I believe that this film was made for cable television (it was made by Showtime Entertainment), but it of a level of quality equivalent to that of a cinema release movie.
May 5, 2008

Not for the Ayn Rand enthusiast

If you are a true, die-hard, Ayn Rand fan, and are familiar with the details of her life, then you will find this perspective a bit hard to take in spots. Definitely a TV drama program...where all of the emphasis is on her personal love affairs, and not much on her as an author, or a prophetic genius of phylosophy. However, if you are willing to objective, and allow yourself to weed through the drama, there are little tid-bits of good film making...but mostly, it is a love story as has been told many, many times before... April 7, 2008

Not my favorite version of Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand wrote some of my favorite books: The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged.

Born at the beginning of the 20th Century Russia, in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, Ayn Rand started to read from the early age of six. By the age of nine, it is said that she knew she wanted to dedicate her life to writing and to philosophy.

Russia of the times was focused in collectivism, something Ayn Rand despised. After reading the works of Victor Hugo her character starts to shape. She lived through the Kerensky Revolution and in 1917, through the Bolshevik Revolution. From the start, she denounced communism and when the revolutionaries are victorious and start the painstaking process of taking away property, confiscating the pharmacy her father owned, she decides Russia is not the country for her. The family undergoes poverty and lack of food. While at school, during a class of American History, Ayn develops the ardent desire to become an American citizen. The United States becomes her goal because she wants to join a nation of free men and women, where the rights of the individual are protected by its constitution.

The university where she was studying philosophy is overtaken by communists, but during her last years of study; she enjoys one great pleasure, watching Western films and plays, and decides to enter the State Institute for Cinema Arts to study screenwriting.

Finally, she is permitted to leave Soviet Russia and to visit the United States. Her trip was supposed to last a short time, but she was determined never to return to Russia. New York City, with its skyscrapers, thousand lights, and never ending activity becomes the city that shapes her interpretation of the finest achievements of humanity.

For a while, following her acting career, she travels to Hollywood and meets Cecil B. DeMille, who offers this striking young woman, with piercing eyes, a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings. Mr. DeMille gives her an opportunity, her first job in the USA, as an extra, a script reader.

She meets actor Frank O'Connor and they strike interesting conversations that result in a marriage until death did they part. She writes The Fountainhead, where she shapes a hero by the name of Howard Roark, an architect, an ideal man that reveals to the world a philosopher that clearly sees how "a man ought to be." She then moves to write Atlas Shrugged, a novel that shares her philosophy through a story, surfacing the concept of objectivism, or how to live on Planet Earth.

Passion is not our favorite view to Ayn Rand. The DVD offers an interpretation of her affair to Nathaniel Branden, but to see how she relates to him and to his wife is sad and almost made us feel that she used her superior wit and intellect to shape these relationships into calculated displays of weak characters. We have always admired Ayn Rand and her marriage to Frank O'Connnor was all we knew about. If all the hypocrisy of this foursome was indeed true, then... as with any hero placed on a pedestal... we found that Ayn Rand did compromise, was unfaithful to her Frank, and was in the end... only human. Frankly, would have rather skipped this film.
April 1, 2008

Excellent character drama

Despite the hagiographic-sounding title, this film is not a work in praise of the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. Instead, it is a biopic, based on a book of the same title, written by Barbara Branden, an erstwhile close friend and high-ranking follower of Rand.

Two attractive young students, Nathaniel Blumenthal (who later changes his name to Nathaniel Branden) and Barbara Weitman (Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy), are invited, following an enthusiastic letter, to meet their idol, Ayn Rand, at the home she shares with her husband Frank O'Connor (heartbreakingly portrayed by Peter Fonda) in California. Both are passionate devotees of her ideas of Objectivism, reason and self-interest, and find a willing guru in Rand, played with grim charisma by Helen Mirren.

While Nathan is attracted to Barbara, her feelings for him are closer to friendship - but under pressure from Rand, who argues that emotion is always based on reason and that therefore the young couple's shared ideals make them a perfect sexual match, the two of them marry. Their unsuccessful marriage, already intimately destructive since Nathaniel has taken it upon himself to act as Barbara's psychotherapist as well as her husband, seeking to eradicate the 'faulty principles' that make her uncomfortable with the relationship, is worsened when Rand and Nathaniel begin an affair, insisting that their prospective partners accept this sexual relationship as the necessary consequence of their mental compatibility. The tensions between the characters play out against the rising cult of the Nathaniel Branden Institute and the success of Atlas Shrugged, leading to moral and emotional chaos under the guise of reason and idealism.

Whether or not the film is an accurate depiction of the real situation is much debated, but as a character study, as a film in its own right, it's excellent. Rand, as portrayed by Mirren, comes across as a woman who argues for reason and individual rights, while in fact being ruled, and ruling all those around her, by her own emotions, a toxic and pathetic queen eternally refusing to see how human nature cannot measure up to her image of it. Stoltz as Nathaniel is a fine portrayal of a bright and not-all-that-bad young man, whose faults, a tendency to self-centredness and dishonesty, are horribly magnified by becoming the favourite disciple of an inconsistent guru, to his own harm as well as everyone else's. Delpy plays the confused, idealistic and fragile Barbara with integrity and passion, and Fonda's portrayal of the kind, weary, alcoholic Frank, clear-sighted about what's going on but too dependent on his wife, both financially and emotionally, to speak up, is downright tragic. There are splendid performances from a strong cast, with an involving story that encourages sympathy with flawed people. Rand supporters may not like it, as it portrays Rand, Branden and the Objectivist movement as fundamentally hypocritical and deluded, but neutral viewers will enjoy an engaging and unusual story, intelligently told and skilfully handled. Well worth a look.
February 2, 2007

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