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55 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent character drama, February 2, 2007
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.
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50 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Passion in the sense of love affairs, rather than ideas etc., October 11, 2003
I was disappointed with this film. I was thinking (or hoping) this film was going to be about the passion of knowledge, ideas, thinking, and any other form of mental stimulation; I really didn't think there was much of that in this film. Maybe I'm just odd in the way I dislike Hollywood's usual portrayal of passion: love affairs et cetera. Passion in this film was portrayed in the Hollywood sense. There was brief mentioning of thoughts, the mind, ideas, the individual, et al, but I felt they were only in idle chatter, and not what really mattered. Maybe all the "Hollywood passion" represented in this film turned me off, but I would have rather spent my time doing something other than watching this film.
Recently I had the pleasure of a watching a different documentary film about Miss Rand called _Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life_. And I think if you are looking for more details actually about her, her life, and her ideas, rather than love affairs which I thought were quite unpleasant within _The Passion of Ayn Rand_, _Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life_ is the film I think you'll enjoy to watch and listen to instead.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Effective rendition of Barbara Branden's bio of Rand, September 24, 2009
This Showtime film takes up the life of Ayn Rand from chapter 20 in Barbara Branden's biography of the same title. The director and screen writers have effectively transmitted the turn from naive hero worship of Rand that Barbara and her boyfriend Nathaniel experienced in the late 1940s to the subsequent stormy love affair between Rand and Nathaniel with its consequences in the lives of Frank O'Connor (Rand's husband) and Barbara, who had married Nathaniel. When the affair started, Rand was in the middle of writing her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, a philosophical novel about unstinting individualists who love whom they will on the way to creating the world they want.
Julie Delpy fairly portrays Barbara's "descent into hell" (to borrow from a Doris Lessing title) of psychological intimidation and manipulation and its breeding of guilt, but Helen Mirren appropriately dominates the screen, mastering Rand's intensity down to detailed mannerisms that conform not only to Barbara's account but to filmed interviews. (For excerpts from these interviews and more, see Michael Paxton's "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," DVD, 2004, available on Amazon.) Whereas Delpy gives us a woman in tune with social dynamics (including jealousy) as well as ideas, Mirren shows a single-minded pursuit of personal goals that easily ignores the existence of others, a kind of "blanking out" of social reality (to borrow an epithet that Rand frequently used). In the scene where Rand negotiates her affair with Nathaniel in the presence of Frank and Barbara, Mirren's voice, face, and body move inexorably from her assumption that everyone will accept her simple moral calculus--what's best for her must be good for all--to mild indignation that the others cannot see with her clarity what is in her/their best interest. Mirren, like Rand, is in control.
Peter Fonda's Frank O'Connor is subdued, sometimes stiff, sometimes baffled, the repressed husband described in the bio. In a scene showing all four walking on a sidewalk, director Menaul has Frank slightly behind the group, ceding the right of way to another pedestrian heading in the opposite direction. Frank seems to take a fatherly interest in Barbara, distantly reminiscent of Jean Val Jean and Cosette. Fonda carries the sense of repression well, showing Barbara kindness and Rand forbearance. Eric Stoltz does an effective job of creating the mixed emotions of a man more in love with ideas than with people, until he finds someone younger, not quite so bright, that he can control without effort.
The supporting cast of easily intimidated businessmen (men only) and easily awed young intellectuals (mostly men but some women) accurately conveyed how hangers on can become sycophants or be driven to despair by the presence of charismatic people. When reason is a weapon to inculcate agreement rather than a tool for building understanding, second-hand parroting can often substitute for real thought. One of these characters works as a screenwriter and must compromise to keep his job, and Mirren's contempt for him is vivid and excruciating. ("Contempt" is an attitude high in the Randian social repertoire, and Mirren picked up on it well.)
The opening and closing New York skyline scenes recall Rand's fascination with the distinctive tall buildings of American modern architecture, but the nightscape hints at the darkness of the story, which is more sad than poignant. The jazz score adds to this feeling, underscoring the Bohemian mood of New York in the 50s and early 60s. This film has little room for what Rand called the "tiddly-wink" music that she relaxed to, though the Blue Danube Waltz gives some of the exhilaration that she must have felt when she was in control. (Rachmaninov, one of her favorites for "serious" music, may have been either too subtle or too bombastic for this film.)
And now for a small quibble...
Although Showtime should be commended for making this film, they also undercut the story on the back of the DVD by saying Rand had a "bizarre love life." Though the Victorians were scandalized by Dickens's and Hugo's affairs with much younger women, few today would care; apparently an older woman writer needing a younger man to stay inspired still seems "bizarre" to our Victorian holdovers.
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