Playing a little catch-up today. This was viewed on 8/16.
An adaptation of the novel, the screenplay itself was written by Ayn Rand. A novel, incidentally, that had a great influence on me several years ago.
Can a sprawling, 700+ page experience be faithfully condensed into 2 hours? No.
Predictably, this one falls victim to the "I-read-it-first" syndrome. The actors are nothing like the characters pictured while reading, large swathes of non-trivial plot points are left on the cutting room floor, precious details are glossed over, insightful monologues become stagy, overacted embarrassments. It's like a hasty puppet-play of the novel with none of its depth and richness.
The film has 2 hours to effectively convey Rand's theory of objectivist individualism to the masses, and in my opinion fails due to heavy-handed pedagogical spoon-feedings and cold, cardboard cut-out characterization.
Oh, and Gary Cooper as Howard Roark? What on earth were they thinking.
IMDB
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