chaswe-28402 The disintegration and disassociation of Nathan Branden. The acidic revenge of Barbara. The weak acceptance of Frank. All thanks to resolute subjectivity and inefficient thought.This is a very realistic story, and the actors genuinely seemed to be living their parts. Whether it was actually true or not is beside the point. While watching it, I didn't fully realise that it was only made for TV, but it now occurs to me that TV is perhaps the superior medium for mentally intriguing and engaging dramas, leaving the wider screen for mindless, fantastic, blockbusting epic action. No reviewer here seems to have complained about the talky lack of action in this film. I did find the frequent sex scenes a bit off-putting. Presumably Barbara is shown to be somewhat frigid. Rand and Branden's sex-life is presented as having helped her give birth to "Atlas Shrugged". In other respects all the personalities in this convoluted saga appear to be fairly barren.About 25 years ago I met a Rand fanatic. He told me "Atlas Shrugged" was the greatest book ever written. I may have made an effort to read it, and I also have an uneasy feeling that I've read "The Fountainhead", which I believe to have been based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. However, since I can't remember anything else about either book, I may be wrong. Somehow I feel that Ayn Rand's contribution to the sum total of human philosophic thought over the last three thousand years is considerably less than its devotees believe.Helen Mirren, the Meryl Streep of the Old World, does a fantastic job as Ayn Rand, but she doesn't make her out to be a very attractive person. Everyone smoked a lot in those days.

blanche-2 "The Passion of Ayn Rand" is an interesting film about the famous and controversial philosopher, adapted from a book by Barbara Branden. Due to the fact that the script was derived from Branden's book, the emphasis is on her and her bad marriage and less on Rand and her philosophy.In the movie, Rand (Helen Mirren) becomes involved with Nathaniel Branden (Eric Stoltz), a psychiatrist 25 years younger than she is (and Barbara's husband), and sets up the Nathaniel Branden Institute. When he becomes involved with another woman, she has him banned from the Nathaniel Branden Institute. The movie doesn't say that, but that's true. Stoltz is very good, if somewhat cold. He comes off as a smart man and a sex addict who is unethical. Helen Mirren likes these roles that de-emphasize her glamour and beauty. She played Alma Hitchcock but she was too glamorous. Ayn Rand was a homely frump. Makeup and clothes did a great job, but Mirren never comes off as frumpy. Nevertheless, she is fantastic, sporting a Russian accent, tremendous passion, and an energetic personality.As to why Nathaniel would be attracted to Rand, she was a brilliant woman and I imagine charismatic. Barbara, well played by Julia Delpy, was an insecure woman, and his marriage to her was not satisfying.Peter Fonda does a fine job as Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor, a man Rand loved, but who himself just went along with her and concentrated on things like painting and gardening. In the movie he becomes a hopeless alcoholic. Part of Rand's philosophy is that you think only of yourself but don't make anyone else unhappy. So she and Branden asked permission of both their spouses to start an affair. Don't tell me they weren't hurt. Branden becomes an integral part of her work until he starts seeing someone else. Not really rational thinking, is it? When Barbara becomes ill and desperate for help, she calls Ayn, who is having sex with Nathan at the time. Ayn says, "Don't you ever think of anyone but yourself?" And hangs up. That's a true story, too.I know something of Ayn Rand from reading The Fountainhead and seeing her interviewed. What has most impressed me about her is her prescience, as so much of what she wrote has come to pass. However, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was a woman and a human being despite aspirations to be something else. She championed selfishness, capitalism, and reason (you can't make something true just by wanting it to be true). A good example of her philosophy is the phrase "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" which she considered to be the wrong way around.The problem with Ayn Rand's philosophy is that, like many philosophies, it's impractical. Once it's off a piece of paper, it involves human beings. For instance, she yells at a screenwriter for writing things he doesn't believe in for the studio. I suppose he could quit -- and if he were a brave soul who didn't care about working or money, he could. But most people aren't brave souls and most people can't get along without money. Why not write what you believe in and hand the studio the dreck? That way you can make a living while working to live your best life.In The Fountainhead, the main character sticks to his beliefs and loses jobs because he won't adhere to the design the client wants. Okay, but it was his business, he wasn't working for someone else. He stuck to his beliefs and found people who bought into them. That's what artists do. The screenwriter would have found a market for his script as well, if he wasn't dead from starvation by then. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark doesn't have a side job, but most people like Howard Roark probably do.The film sports excellent production values, capturing the '50s beautifully. There are a couple of faux pas -- in one, Frank makes reference to "King of Kings," the silent version, emphasizing that it was the REAL King of Kings. This indicates there was another, but there wasn't until some years later. Also at one point Nathaniel offers to call his wife a cab. It's New York City. You don't call for cabs. Minor points both.Helen Mirren is always worth seeing. You'll have to make up your own mind about Rand.

Robert J. Maxwell The movie begins with the success of "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand (Helen Mirrin) and covers the next fifteen or so years of her rise to the top of a collective movement known as "objectivism," which became a kind of cult with Rand as the golden-gowned Inca empress. What a dull movie.Let's see. Mirrin is married to Frank (Peter Fonda), an alcholic wimp who paints and cultivates flowers. The couple take under their wing an admiring young married couple, Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy. (I'm going to skip the characters' names because they're unimportant historically and dramatically.) Mirrin develops a maternal affection for Stoltz that soon enough blossoms into something more physical. Julie Delpy twigs to this. We know so because she confronts Stoltz: "She loves you! And you love HER!" Mirren and Stoltz meet together with their spouses and tell the truth. They want an open marriage, meaning Mirren and Stoltz get to hump each others' brains out without the same privilege being extended to Fonda and Delpy. The spouses grant Mirren and Stoltz one afternoon a week alone, but the pair have so much fun they begin bootlegging more hours into the arrangement.Delpy, meanwhile, is having anxiety attacks, which are nerve wracking, as I can testify. In despair she calls Mirren from a café, begging to come to her for advice and succor, and Mirren comes back with a blistering accusation of selfishness. I'm not sure the screenplay recognizes the irony here, because Ayn Rand's "objectivist philosophy" is nothing if it is not a glorification of selfishness. Anyway, a kindly passer-by notices Delpy collapsing in the phone booth and he's a sensitive, caring type, a musician, and escorts her home. The relationship grows warmer but Delpy refuses to break her marriage vows and -- yawn -- excuse me -- she asks Stoltz for the same open-marriage arrangement that he's got. He balks.He's got nothing to balk about. He's a practicing clinical psychologist and one of his patients, a beautiful young woman, Sybil Temtchine, develops a severe case of what we practicing clinical psychologists call "transference," not uncommon in neurotics. Rather less common is the way Stoltz exhibits what we practicing psychologists call "counter-transference." He humps her brains out too. To such an extent that Mirren begins musing aloud, "When was the last time we made love?" Are you confused yet? I only ask because I'm a little gemischt myself.At any rate, Stoltz develops a case of conscious or something -- I may have had a period of microsleep at this point -- and resigns from the Institute. Mirren slaps him around, accuses him of treachery, and does her level best to destroy him. But the stalwart Delpy sticks with her husband and resigns in sympathy.In the end, objectivism has become a terrific success after the publication of Rand's last book, "Atlas Shrugged," although the critics bombed it, and she makes lots of dough on the lecture circuit -- bold, unashamed before challenging questions from the crowd, full of wisecracks, reveling in her celebrity and money. It must be wonderful to have no doubts about one's self.No viewer will learn very much about objectivism. It's not the central topic of the movie. The title tells it all -- "The Passion of Ayn Rand." That passion extended far beyond any desire to educate or convert the public. It encompassed power, possessions, and wealth.What more is there to say about this dreary story. There's so much strenuous and lubricious sex in it that it could have shown up late at night on Cinemax except that the girls would all need bigger bosoms, something along the lines of watermelons. The musical score is mostly slow, sad, muted trumpet, straight out of "Miles Davis Plays Music for Lovers." The dialog sucks. "Did you talk to her about our problems?" "OUR problems? You mean that you don't like sex anymore?" There's an interesting story that was waiting to be built around the rise (and subsequent decline) of objectivism. How -- exactly -- does a cult begin? You need a charismatic figure, of course, and Ayn Rand provided it. Then you typically get proprietary sexual relationships and the concomitant jealousies or self abnegation. The difference between objectivism and most cults is that Rand's had a political, even a metaphysical flavor, whereas most are built around some variant of religious salvation. But cults, like Christianity was when it began, need an organizer and solidifier to follow the charismatic founder when he shuffles off this mortal coil. Christianity at least had St. Paul, but who was there to follow Ayn Rand, to organize the objectivists? Her husband Frank? The elderly and reclusive Frank, who lived off Rand's leavings? Frank, the mediocre painter? The wimp who loved Los Angeles because you could grow a greater variety of flowers there? I once spoke to an architect about "The Fountainhead." It's hero's architectural genius creates a gas station that one fictional critic calls, "An insolent 'No' flung in the face of history." "It's all very well," my architect friend admitted, "if you're a genius. But what about the rest of us, who are no more than good at what we do?" Yes. An interesting story is hidden in the shadows of this abject production, but it remains to be told.

yossarian100 A soap opera about Barbara Branden, even with the lovely Julie Delpy doing the honors, is not very interesting unless one makes Barbara Branden the main character. But, this is The Passion of Ayn Rand, which of course it isn't. Even though Helen Mirren absolutely nails the part and does a great job of capturing the image of Ayn Rand, we just don't get much of a movie here and the whole production smacks of 'made for tv.' I've always been a big fan of Ayn Rand, even though I'm a liberal, and I guess I hoped for something with a little more quality about her writing, philosophy, and the unusual woman she actually was, you know, the passion of Ayn Rand.