Review of The Fountainhead (1949) by Josh W — 29 Nov 2007

In terms of the movie itself, it was pretty good, but for me it was very hard to judge based only on the movie. I've read the book, and it is one of the greatest book ever written. The movie did a pretty good job of slaughtering the book though, which if you read the book and understand the story itself, i's very ironic.

Ayn Rand wrote the book about Howard Rourke, an architect who allows no compromise in his work. He was made out to be the ultimate hero, the greatest of all men, the irony comes from the fact that Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay that was full of compromises.

To begin with, basically the entire first half of the novel wasw thrown out the window, save a few, very few, key points. All contraversy was removed, save a single scene, which was severly watered down.

Events occured obscenely out of order. Every character was severly weekend, especially that of Dominique. A plus was that the 2 most powerfull speeches of the book were left in, edited, by keeping ther effect.

The biggest injustice of all was the abscence of cruelty, The Fountainhead is a very cruel book in so many ways, yet rightous in it's cruelty, it speaks the truth. The book is part of a foundation for an entire philosphical theory, the movie is little more than your typical B+W love story, not that I have any problem with those, but this was Ayn Rand betraying her own work, she sacrificed something graet for something average, those who know Ayn Rand know what an atrocity this is.