The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I thought Helen Mirren, Eric Stoltz, and Julie Delpy did a great job, especially Helen Mirren, who can convey such shades of emotion so seemingly effortlessly. The movie held my attention because I kept wondering what she would do next, especially when she was seducing a much younger man.Unfortunately, she failed to make us understand why Ayn Rand had such a hold on (some) people. I blame the script for this, I guess, but the writers may not have understood her success, such as it was, themselves. The places where we come closest to getting it are the scenes with Rand in front of large audiences, where she displays wit and aplomb. In the scenes where she is dominating a small group of regular disciples, it's hard for the viewer to understand what hold she had on them.Other remarks: Julie Delpy's American accent wobbles occasionally, but Mirren's Russian accent is great. Peter Fonda is in this movie, which normally keeps me away, but his natural woodenness fits his character in this movie.

A pretty dreadful, made-for-TV look biopic. There's very little character to fire the imagination, let alone any sympathy. The script concentrates doggedly on recording history and trying to explain Ayn Rand's philosophy.We undoubtedly get a horribly disembowelled version of Rand's 'objectivism' - in this film that simply means 'being selfish' and 'uncaring'. Consequently the cast are a bit scuppered. Mirren works fairly hard, with a consistent accent, but the rest are average-to-lame... Peter Fonda's Frank is dreadfully wooden.Further issues: there are lots of close framed shots (which save on having to create period sets); a surfeit of weeping to camera; and there's no big-arc coherence - the opening flashback isn't recalled at the denouement. Cheap and, worse, probably inaccurate. 2/10

This is not awful based on production qualities, but rather in the domain of justice.To honestly understand the perspective of the authors, Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, and what they are hiding, see the book, "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics" by James Valliant.Ayn Rand is so controversial because she challenges the premises of those in power, from religion, to politics, to academia. Just now, more than a hundred years after her birth and 20 years after her death, the truth is coming out on her personal life and more importantly her seminal contributions to the foundations of philosophy. Academia is just opening it's eyes to her ideas and exposing students to this alternative to the history of philosophy. She has literally laid the foundations for ethics and the other branches of philosophy to become a science for the first time in human history.

Occupant-1 writes " it would be a good idea in future film treatment of her character to use a European actress, not an American one, to portray her - as done here. It takes a European to play one, since they have a different educational history than what American public education has afforded its actresses. In other words, most American actresses couldn't handle the literate dialog."I'm sure you can see this one coming: In fact, the actress in the film, Helen Mirren, is European. Perhaps one of Britain's most well loved theatrical exports.Occupant-1: Perfect logic, hopeless premise. Exemplary objectivist argumentation.