Review of The Fountainhead (1949) by Nikolai E — 03 Jun 2009

I always violently disapproved of Rand's philosophy, but this film actually works as a weird kind of critique of the actual effects of such a lifestyle. First of all, I never realized until now how shallow Rand's writing is.

Her characters certainly make unusual decisions, but each one has a single guiding purpose and ambition in life and they all cling to it like a security blanket. One character's self-stated goal is to destroy all that is good and beautiful in the world, because he knows it can never be his.

Seriously. Everything makes a lot more sense when you realize these people are paper-thin stereotypes amped up to eleven, and you know what? Good for Ayn. Hyperbolic characterizations have been the stuff of philosophical argument since ancient Greece, and all the tooth-grating, shirt-tearing, fate-cursing melodrama, the awesome dignity and barely-contained undercurrents of emotion sure makes it all very watchable.

But even these characters, written for no other reason but to populate a universe in which Ayn Rand is right, have pretty terrible problems. They're never happy, they can't love anyone, they look at other people and see only enemies.

One thing I can't deny is that Ayn's right about the really important human achievements, in that they were never produced for the good of society, but for the love of the work, as she quite correctly points out that revolutionary ideas are always scorned and denied for endless years before they're adopted.

Of course, it's another matter to live as though you're the one-in-ten-billion people who's going to revolutionize anything. Optimism is nice, but if you only think you're a genius, as most geniuses don't, Rand's guide to life is a one-way ticket to starvation under a bridge.

It's a good thing to remember that the best ideas are always the most hated, but trying to graft that into an argument that nobody should give or accept help from anyone else is more than a little taxing.