Atlas Shrugged III: Pt. 2
Jan. 5th, 2016 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyPreviously on Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?, Dagny crashed a plane into Galt’s Gulch and found out who John Galt was. The answer was mostly disappointing, and she went from being a semi-successful railroad tycoon to a chambermaid for a narcissistic sociopath.
Hey, did you know that Ayn Rand worked as a Hollywood screenwriter when she first arrived in America? You would think her books would work a little better as films as a result, but you’d be wrong.
Let’s talk about the economy of Galt’s Gulch and how it makes no fucking sense.
First of all, they only use gold for currency. I’m guessing that no one comes in carrying gold, and I’m not sure how readily available gold is in Colorado, but I’m guessing that there isn’t shitloads of it. Galt says it comes from the Mulligan Bank (all of these guys name their corporations after themselves, have I mentioned that?).
In the previous scene (well, there was some more stock footage/voiceover but I didn’t bother recapping it), we just learned that the only thing Galt’s people took from their old lives was their minds. Either:
a) Midas Mulligan literally makes gold somehow, either the way his namesake did or by shitting it out;
b) There is some previously untapped gigantic reservoir of gold in the mountains of Colorado that Midas is allowed to access, despite his overall lack of gold-mining experience;
c) Midas was the only person allowed to bring something from his old life and they all just kind of overlooked it, or
d) Galt is a lying liar who lies.
I’m gonna go with Option D as the most likely.
Another problem is purely pragmatic in nature. Later on, we’ll see that one of these coins buys a croissant. Dagny gets paid three gold coins in advance for her indentured servitude mopping up Galt’s goop. Let’s say a croissant costs the equivalent of a dollar. One gold coin, therefore, equals a dollar.
Now, how much gold are people hauling around on a regular basis? Let’s say you survive a plane crash. Remember, there is no government regulation of industry, so businesses can charge as much as they like. So a $474K hospital bill from a greedy fuck like Dr. Hendricks wouldn’t be beyond the pale. Imagine carrying around 474,000,000 gold coins? Hell, imagine just carrying around 80 gold coins to take yourself and your partner for a nice dinner or something. I guess that’s how Dr. Hendricks makes his fortune, though, treating people with bad backs.
And then there’s the matter of how money gets into the system, if everyone’s money is worthless and they brought nothing with them. Sure, the miners we see later can do actual work, but almost everyone else is self-employed.
Also, I would like to point out that the dollar sign on the gold coin is the most aggressively po-mo image I have ever seen in a movie.
(This is my new favourite gif of all time. Revel in it.)
I don’t know about you, but when I picture a capitalist utopia, the image that comes to mind is a hippie farmer’s market in Vermont.
I’ll spend some time on this, since it’s the only scene you really get of what daily life in Galt’s Gulch is like, and it makes no sense whatsoever.
Look at the clothes on the rack and how people are dressed. I know I keep saying it, but this is a self-sufficient community of a few hundred capitalists, and hardly any of them would have practical experience working with their hands. What we see is clothing produced in a factory, and looks like it’s mostly made out of cotton. In order to make this, you need cotton farms, people and/or machinery to harvest the cotton, factories to produce the fabric, and factories to manufacture the clothing from the fabric. Also, as far as I know, Colorado is not known for its thriving cotton plantations. If you had a few hundred people to clothe, and you only had what you’d brought with you plus what was locally available, you’d see a lot more animal skins and a lot less plaid. It would also make no sense to mass-produce off-the-rack clothing; you’d have fabric or leather and have a tailor to measure and sew the clothes, since you’re dealing with such a small market. Anyway, I think it would look a lot more Mad Max and a lot less L.L. Bean.
Sorry to disappoint you, but this is what Ragnar the Pirate actually looks like. Also, what kind of pirate spends his time chilling at a farmer’s market?
He asks if she’s joined them, and when she says she hasn’t and she’s just invited herself over for a month-long vacation, he calls her a scab. Ragnar understands labour relations about as well as he understands piracy.
He does not say “ARRRRR MATEY” and I am v. disappointed.
Remember how Dagny sprained her ankle and is walking around in what appears to be mainly woodland in the mountains?
Yeah, well she’s doing it wearing heels.
Dagny hobbles up the stairs with her cane and high heels to meet a woman with two kids who are sitting around playing guitar. The only point of this scene, as far as I can tell, is to talk about how awesome homeschooling is and establish the value of one of the gold coins.
Dagny flubs her line (“I guess they have some, um, great role models around here”) but they don’t bother with a retake. Chop chop, people, we’re on a budget! Austerity FTW!
More stock footage and voiceover exposition. I truly cannot stress how much of this film is carried by voiceover and stock footage.
If I have this right, there’s a copper shortage because Francisco D’Anaconda blew up his own copper mines and then Ragnar the Shitty Pirate sunk the copper ships, and this leads to an energy crisis, which Dagny’s brother Jim Taggart denies is going to affect the railroad company’s ability to bring Minnesota’s wheat to the rest of the country. Did you know that all of the wheat in America comes from Minnesota? That’s why Galt’s Gulch has croissants. Oh yeah, and he says Dagny is dead.
Good.
Anyway all of the bad guys meet in a smoky hotel room to conspire, the way bad guys do. They are: The head of state, known as Mr. Thompson, Head of State; Jim Taggart, CEO of Taggart Transcontinental and Dagny’s brother; Dr. Floyd Ferris, the associate director of the State Science Institute (motto: “Science belongs to the people!”); and Wesley Mouch, head of the Bureau of Economic Planning. If you don’t remember their names, don’t worry, neither do I. There are titles flashing across the screen to help, but they’re all generic middle-aged white dudes and I find it hard to keep track, except that Thompson looks and sounds a bit like Richard Nixon and Ferris is balding with red hair and a big nose.
The evil conspiracy is that they have a secret weapons program called Project F and also Thompson is going to make a speech, which is so important that they were advertising it with posters earlier.
Galt and Dagny hang out in her bedroom in Galt’s house and have more awkward dialogue about how government is evil. She doesn’t want to stay in the Gulch because she loves the railroad, and asks if it was this difficult for everyone.
Shut your fucking pie hole, Dagny. You know what’s difficult? Being a 10-year-old coalminer working 12 hour shifts and dying of blacklung. You know why that doesn’t happen in America anymore? Government regulations, fought and bled for by organized labour. Also, fuck you.
Anyway on the ceiling is very authentic graffiti carved out by all of Galt’s victims during their first night imprisoned in his house. I mean, the names of various people who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. All of these people should be ashamed of themselves.
Remember Francisco D’Anaconda? He was Dagny’s billionaire playboy ex who owned copper mines (before he blew them all up) and made really uncomfortable speeches at other people’s parties?
Well anyway, he’s aged really badly.
This is where the film abandons flat acting, cheap sets, and a tenuous grasp on economic theory to veer sharply into fantasy territory. Galt takes Dagny to see his magic engine, which runs on static electricity and generates enough power to supply the whole west coast. (Remember, the engine was stolen by the scientist Dagny was chasing at the end of Part 2, but this engine appears to have been here for awhile, and must have been, based on the level of economic development shown in Galt’s Gulch. I guess Galt built two magic engines? Anyway, what’s most important right now is that you remember that the engine is here. There’ll be a quiz later.)
So far so good—I mean, the technology makes no fucking sense, but I will grant a near-future sci-fi film a McGuffin or two. What I will not accept is that the engine is housed in a structure that only opens if you say the magic words, which are conveniently written above the door. But you have to mean the magic words to make the door open, and since Dagny doesn’t mean them, the door won’t open for her. This is no longer goofy sci-fi. This is some Hogwarts-level shit right here.
I don’t totally object to the presence of magic in political fiction, but Rand claimed to be an atheist, and it just doesn’t seem to fit with the style of film. We’ve gone two movies without any indication that this is a world where you need to really believe in order to say the magic words that will make a door open, and it’s totally thrown me off. Are there also wizards? Is Ragnar the Pirate a wizard? Who else is a wizard? Are there dragons? A dragon right now would maybe redeem this pile of dreck. Has Dagny ever secretly fucked her brother and produced golden-haired, sociopathic offspring while he tossed young children off towers?
I MUST KNOW.
In lieu of well-written character development, there’s a montage of Galt and Dagny doing romantic things in the woods, like meeting electricians (where did the electrical workers come from? How does Galt know which ones to kidnap, one by one, in his little plane?) and checking out the power generator and polishing canoes. Doesn’t Dagny have work to do? Shouldn’t she be cleaning Galt’s outhouse to earn enough gold coins to buy her croissants?
I am struck by the similarities of how their romance is shown to progress and the very crude propaganda produced under Stalinism, where red-cheeked workers sang about the joys of increased tractor production.
Ah, young love!
Hey, you know what the first thing I’d check out in a tour around someone’s utopia? The sewage system. The most important thing in any society is the sewage system; it’s the difference between dying of dysentery at age five and living to an acceptably old age. I have yet to see whether Galt’s Gulch has any flush toilets, or where the waste goes. This is very important and I feel that the movie should address these issues. You don’t want to start your libertarian paradise and then realize you forgot the snacks.
Dagny figures out how to improve Francisco D’Anaconda’s mining operation with railways, because this wasn’t a thing he’d thought of before. Francisco offers to hire her and tells her that Midas will give her a loan. Galt cheerfully tells her that her bridge is going to collapse anyway so she might as well stay.
All this woman ever does is go on picnics and meet people and drink wine. How is she paying her own way at this point?
At least the wine production is explained, though, because nothing else is.
Galt’s professor gives her a really long lecture about the roots of state power and the evils of altruism. I’ll spare you most of it but the best bit:
“All of your life you’ve heard people saying that we have to help the less fortunate. That the measure of virtue is, is, not what you achieve, but what you do for others. You-you’ve heard them say that people have a right to a living, just because they’re human. And that’s not the right to earn a living, that is a right to a living, which you are required to provide for them.”
I’m sorry, Egghead Academic Dude, what do you produce again? What are you bringing to the table exactly? Speak up, I can’t hear you.
Oh. Nothing but piss-poor and unworkable economic theory? Carry on, then.
Dagny can’t sleep so she gets up to raid the fridge. Galt is already in the kitchen and announces that they’re out of chocolate cake as he eats the last ginormous slice. He specifically says it’s chocolate cake in case you can’t tell.
Putting aside, if you can, the truly excellent visual metaphor for the injustices of distribution under late-stage industrial capitalism, HOW THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL FUCK?
I may not know much about economics, but I do know a lot about baking. You know what you need for chocolate cake?
Chocolate.
You know what 100% is not grown in Colorado? Fucking cocoa plants.
They can probably get most of the other ingredients: You could grow cereal grains, raise chickens for the eggs, cows for the butter, and use something like sugar beets for sweetening. I don’t know how big Galt’s Gulch is supposed to be but if you have a basic agrarian settlement, those aren’t unreasonable products to have. But you are not going to get chocolate.
So decide now, Randroids. Do you want an American off-the-grid ancap utopia of hardworking businessmen or do you want chocolate cake? Because you can’t have both.
I mean, I know what I’d choose.
Then they have a cute little discussion about the first time he saw her. Not the first time they met, which was the plane crash—the first time he saw her.
As in he has been stalking her for years. It’s even framed, in a rare break from the flat eye-level shot-reverse-shot of nearly all the filmed scenes, as a POV shot from the shadows.
She seems to think this is sweet rather than fucking horrifying but points out that the plane that’s been circling overhead is Hank Rearden, a.k.a. the male protagonist of the first two movies and her boyfriend. Who is looking for her. I’m not sure why they’re not just letting him land (Francisco has made it clear that Galt “wants him”) or why he even has a plane, given the established scarcity of both functioning planes and fuel, but okay, he’s circling Galt’s Gulch looking for her.
Galt reminds us that “Hank’s a good man,” though we’ve seen no evidence of this.
More voiceovers inform us that the situation is getting worse and the State Science Institute is developing “crude but lethal crowd control devices.” I think those already exist in the real world. I think they’re called something like “guns” or maybe “rooty-tooty-point-and-shooties.” This is not as stupid as Project F, though. And there’s rubble on the train tunnel from the explosion in the last movie and I guess it’s the only tunnel or something because it’s very important.
Not so important that they’d actually show a scene explaining why.
Meanwhile, Dagny is fucking around with these old men in a living room that has a giant gold dollar sign over the mantelpiece, because just like your grandmother always told you, money doesn’t buy taste.
Midas: Dagny, have you made your mind yet?
Dagny: I think so, but I’m not sure.
Me: THAT’S THE DEFINITION OF NOT HAVING MADE UP YOUR MIND fuckin’ bimbo I h8 her.
Galt tells her to follow her mind, not her heart, then says that he’s going back to New York. Francisco and Midas tell him that it’s not safe, but Galt says that if he decides to go back, it’ll be for Dagny. Awww.
This is all getting a bit 50 Shades of Grey for my taste.
Dagny remembers that her ugly bracelet that she always wears is from this guy Hank Rearden that she used to fuck in the first two movies, and maybe since she’s back from the presumed-dead, she should give him a call.
She starts with “I have something I need to tell you,” which ranks just below “we need to talk” and “I’m having this weird discharge from my genitals” in terms of things you don’t want to hear from someone you’ve slept with. However, he cuts her off at the pass and tells her that he’ll always treasure what they had, so that’s that then. More interestingly, he says, “I have to go, Frisco is waiting.” “Frisco” is Francisco’s new nickname that he didn’t have in previous movies, so I guess off-screen he and Hank got together. Nothing like mutual sloppy seconds, I guess.
I’m pretty impressed at the lack of romanticism here. Ayn Rand was into a weird kind of poly where she got to sleep with whoever she wanted and her lovers got to sleep with whoever she allowed, until she no longer liked that, but even by her standards, this is pretty cold. Rearden left his wife for her and their love was supposedly so intense over the last two movies, and they let it go with just a phone call and we never see him again, probably because Galt had him killed.
Incidentally, Randroids sign off on a breakup phone call with, you guessed it, “Who is John Galt?”
The voiceover/stock footage segments continue to get weirder. The latest update:
Jim Taggart calls a press conference to announce that his dead sister is now a zombie or some shit.
Mill workers die defending their mill from, quote, “government-sponsored union thugs,” indicating that either Rand or the screenwriter or both do not understand a) how the government works, b) how unions work, and c) how workers work.
I’m just picturing a bunch of workers with picket signs that read, “We’d rather die than cut into our boss’s profits” or something.
If you get my turn-of-the-century labour jokes, you win a prize.
And there’s an update on the all-important crisis of Minnesota wheat, because if there’s anything that will get an audience engrossed in a film, it’s the suspense over whether Minnesota wheat will be delivered to the northeast.
This is almost a decent shot. Just move Ferris like half a foot to the left and it’s a good shot. Instead it feels like the cinematographer deliberately bungled a very obvious shot that is hard to fuck up.
Anyway, this is Ferris and Stadler, who is the founder of the State Science Institute and Galt’s other former professor. Ferris has dragged him away from his all-important sciencing to inform him that his work is being used for Project F, which is the government’s top-secret torture device. I would like answers to the following questions:
1) Why doesn’t Ferris just call or text him? If Stadler’s busy, he could leave a message.
2) Why does the government need top-secret anything? There is no one opposing them. If I were running an evil totalitarian regime, I would make my scary torture device public so that no one would get it in their head to oppose me.
3) Why is it even necessary to inform Stadler that his research is being used to make a top-secret torture device? Is he supposed to be impressed? It’s not like they want him to improve it or something.
Oh, it’s all to get Stadler’s signature. Why does Ferris need Stadler’s signature? Science already belongs to the people; what does the signature do? Is the signature magical?
So he signs it, because he has all the ethics.
Will the Minnesota wheat get to the northeast? Will Dagny choose Galt or Rearden? Will the voiceovers ever fucking stop? Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!
Hey, did you know that Ayn Rand worked as a Hollywood screenwriter when she first arrived in America? You would think her books would work a little better as films as a result, but you’d be wrong.
Let’s talk about the economy of Galt’s Gulch and how it makes no fucking sense.
First of all, they only use gold for currency. I’m guessing that no one comes in carrying gold, and I’m not sure how readily available gold is in Colorado, but I’m guessing that there isn’t shitloads of it. Galt says it comes from the Mulligan Bank (all of these guys name their corporations after themselves, have I mentioned that?).
In the previous scene (well, there was some more stock footage/voiceover but I didn’t bother recapping it), we just learned that the only thing Galt’s people took from their old lives was their minds. Either:
a) Midas Mulligan literally makes gold somehow, either the way his namesake did or by shitting it out;
b) There is some previously untapped gigantic reservoir of gold in the mountains of Colorado that Midas is allowed to access, despite his overall lack of gold-mining experience;
c) Midas was the only person allowed to bring something from his old life and they all just kind of overlooked it, or
d) Galt is a lying liar who lies.
I’m gonna go with Option D as the most likely.
Another problem is purely pragmatic in nature. Later on, we’ll see that one of these coins buys a croissant. Dagny gets paid three gold coins in advance for her indentured servitude mopping up Galt’s goop. Let’s say a croissant costs the equivalent of a dollar. One gold coin, therefore, equals a dollar.
Now, how much gold are people hauling around on a regular basis? Let’s say you survive a plane crash. Remember, there is no government regulation of industry, so businesses can charge as much as they like. So a $474K hospital bill from a greedy fuck like Dr. Hendricks wouldn’t be beyond the pale. Imagine carrying around 474,000,000 gold coins? Hell, imagine just carrying around 80 gold coins to take yourself and your partner for a nice dinner or something. I guess that’s how Dr. Hendricks makes his fortune, though, treating people with bad backs.
And then there’s the matter of how money gets into the system, if everyone’s money is worthless and they brought nothing with them. Sure, the miners we see later can do actual work, but almost everyone else is self-employed.
Also, I would like to point out that the dollar sign on the gold coin is the most aggressively po-mo image I have ever seen in a movie.
(This is my new favourite gif of all time. Revel in it.)
I don’t know about you, but when I picture a capitalist utopia, the image that comes to mind is a hippie farmer’s market in Vermont.
I’ll spend some time on this, since it’s the only scene you really get of what daily life in Galt’s Gulch is like, and it makes no sense whatsoever.
Look at the clothes on the rack and how people are dressed. I know I keep saying it, but this is a self-sufficient community of a few hundred capitalists, and hardly any of them would have practical experience working with their hands. What we see is clothing produced in a factory, and looks like it’s mostly made out of cotton. In order to make this, you need cotton farms, people and/or machinery to harvest the cotton, factories to produce the fabric, and factories to manufacture the clothing from the fabric. Also, as far as I know, Colorado is not known for its thriving cotton plantations. If you had a few hundred people to clothe, and you only had what you’d brought with you plus what was locally available, you’d see a lot more animal skins and a lot less plaid. It would also make no sense to mass-produce off-the-rack clothing; you’d have fabric or leather and have a tailor to measure and sew the clothes, since you’re dealing with such a small market. Anyway, I think it would look a lot more Mad Max and a lot less L.L. Bean.
Sorry to disappoint you, but this is what Ragnar the Pirate actually looks like. Also, what kind of pirate spends his time chilling at a farmer’s market?
He asks if she’s joined them, and when she says she hasn’t and she’s just invited herself over for a month-long vacation, he calls her a scab. Ragnar understands labour relations about as well as he understands piracy.
He does not say “ARRRRR MATEY” and I am v. disappointed.
Remember how Dagny sprained her ankle and is walking around in what appears to be mainly woodland in the mountains?
Yeah, well she’s doing it wearing heels.
Dagny hobbles up the stairs with her cane and high heels to meet a woman with two kids who are sitting around playing guitar. The only point of this scene, as far as I can tell, is to talk about how awesome homeschooling is and establish the value of one of the gold coins.
Dagny flubs her line (“I guess they have some, um, great role models around here”) but they don’t bother with a retake. Chop chop, people, we’re on a budget! Austerity FTW!
More stock footage and voiceover exposition. I truly cannot stress how much of this film is carried by voiceover and stock footage.
If I have this right, there’s a copper shortage because Francisco D’Anaconda blew up his own copper mines and then Ragnar the Shitty Pirate sunk the copper ships, and this leads to an energy crisis, which Dagny’s brother Jim Taggart denies is going to affect the railroad company’s ability to bring Minnesota’s wheat to the rest of the country. Did you know that all of the wheat in America comes from Minnesota? That’s why Galt’s Gulch has croissants. Oh yeah, and he says Dagny is dead.
Good.
Anyway all of the bad guys meet in a smoky hotel room to conspire, the way bad guys do. They are: The head of state, known as Mr. Thompson, Head of State; Jim Taggart, CEO of Taggart Transcontinental and Dagny’s brother; Dr. Floyd Ferris, the associate director of the State Science Institute (motto: “Science belongs to the people!”); and Wesley Mouch, head of the Bureau of Economic Planning. If you don’t remember their names, don’t worry, neither do I. There are titles flashing across the screen to help, but they’re all generic middle-aged white dudes and I find it hard to keep track, except that Thompson looks and sounds a bit like Richard Nixon and Ferris is balding with red hair and a big nose.
The evil conspiracy is that they have a secret weapons program called Project F and also Thompson is going to make a speech, which is so important that they were advertising it with posters earlier.
Galt and Dagny hang out in her bedroom in Galt’s house and have more awkward dialogue about how government is evil. She doesn’t want to stay in the Gulch because she loves the railroad, and asks if it was this difficult for everyone.
Shut your fucking pie hole, Dagny. You know what’s difficult? Being a 10-year-old coalminer working 12 hour shifts and dying of blacklung. You know why that doesn’t happen in America anymore? Government regulations, fought and bled for by organized labour. Also, fuck you.
Anyway on the ceiling is very authentic graffiti carved out by all of Galt’s victims during their first night imprisoned in his house. I mean, the names of various people who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. All of these people should be ashamed of themselves.
Remember Francisco D’Anaconda? He was Dagny’s billionaire playboy ex who owned copper mines (before he blew them all up) and made really uncomfortable speeches at other people’s parties?
Well anyway, he’s aged really badly.
This is where the film abandons flat acting, cheap sets, and a tenuous grasp on economic theory to veer sharply into fantasy territory. Galt takes Dagny to see his magic engine, which runs on static electricity and generates enough power to supply the whole west coast. (Remember, the engine was stolen by the scientist Dagny was chasing at the end of Part 2, but this engine appears to have been here for awhile, and must have been, based on the level of economic development shown in Galt’s Gulch. I guess Galt built two magic engines? Anyway, what’s most important right now is that you remember that the engine is here. There’ll be a quiz later.)
So far so good—I mean, the technology makes no fucking sense, but I will grant a near-future sci-fi film a McGuffin or two. What I will not accept is that the engine is housed in a structure that only opens if you say the magic words, which are conveniently written above the door. But you have to mean the magic words to make the door open, and since Dagny doesn’t mean them, the door won’t open for her. This is no longer goofy sci-fi. This is some Hogwarts-level shit right here.
I don’t totally object to the presence of magic in political fiction, but Rand claimed to be an atheist, and it just doesn’t seem to fit with the style of film. We’ve gone two movies without any indication that this is a world where you need to really believe in order to say the magic words that will make a door open, and it’s totally thrown me off. Are there also wizards? Is Ragnar the Pirate a wizard? Who else is a wizard? Are there dragons? A dragon right now would maybe redeem this pile of dreck. Has Dagny ever secretly fucked her brother and produced golden-haired, sociopathic offspring while he tossed young children off towers?
I MUST KNOW.
In lieu of well-written character development, there’s a montage of Galt and Dagny doing romantic things in the woods, like meeting electricians (where did the electrical workers come from? How does Galt know which ones to kidnap, one by one, in his little plane?) and checking out the power generator and polishing canoes. Doesn’t Dagny have work to do? Shouldn’t she be cleaning Galt’s outhouse to earn enough gold coins to buy her croissants?
I am struck by the similarities of how their romance is shown to progress and the very crude propaganda produced under Stalinism, where red-cheeked workers sang about the joys of increased tractor production.
Ah, young love!
Hey, you know what the first thing I’d check out in a tour around someone’s utopia? The sewage system. The most important thing in any society is the sewage system; it’s the difference between dying of dysentery at age five and living to an acceptably old age. I have yet to see whether Galt’s Gulch has any flush toilets, or where the waste goes. This is very important and I feel that the movie should address these issues. You don’t want to start your libertarian paradise and then realize you forgot the snacks.
Dagny figures out how to improve Francisco D’Anaconda’s mining operation with railways, because this wasn’t a thing he’d thought of before. Francisco offers to hire her and tells her that Midas will give her a loan. Galt cheerfully tells her that her bridge is going to collapse anyway so she might as well stay.
All this woman ever does is go on picnics and meet people and drink wine. How is she paying her own way at this point?
At least the wine production is explained, though, because nothing else is.
Galt’s professor gives her a really long lecture about the roots of state power and the evils of altruism. I’ll spare you most of it but the best bit:
“All of your life you’ve heard people saying that we have to help the less fortunate. That the measure of virtue is, is, not what you achieve, but what you do for others. You-you’ve heard them say that people have a right to a living, just because they’re human. And that’s not the right to earn a living, that is a right to a living, which you are required to provide for them.”
I’m sorry, Egghead Academic Dude, what do you produce again? What are you bringing to the table exactly? Speak up, I can’t hear you.
Oh. Nothing but piss-poor and unworkable economic theory? Carry on, then.
Dagny can’t sleep so she gets up to raid the fridge. Galt is already in the kitchen and announces that they’re out of chocolate cake as he eats the last ginormous slice. He specifically says it’s chocolate cake in case you can’t tell.
Putting aside, if you can, the truly excellent visual metaphor for the injustices of distribution under late-stage industrial capitalism, HOW THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL FUCK?
I may not know much about economics, but I do know a lot about baking. You know what you need for chocolate cake?
Chocolate.
You know what 100% is not grown in Colorado? Fucking cocoa plants.
They can probably get most of the other ingredients: You could grow cereal grains, raise chickens for the eggs, cows for the butter, and use something like sugar beets for sweetening. I don’t know how big Galt’s Gulch is supposed to be but if you have a basic agrarian settlement, those aren’t unreasonable products to have. But you are not going to get chocolate.
So decide now, Randroids. Do you want an American off-the-grid ancap utopia of hardworking businessmen or do you want chocolate cake? Because you can’t have both.
I mean, I know what I’d choose.
Then they have a cute little discussion about the first time he saw her. Not the first time they met, which was the plane crash—the first time he saw her.
As in he has been stalking her for years. It’s even framed, in a rare break from the flat eye-level shot-reverse-shot of nearly all the filmed scenes, as a POV shot from the shadows.
She seems to think this is sweet rather than fucking horrifying but points out that the plane that’s been circling overhead is Hank Rearden, a.k.a. the male protagonist of the first two movies and her boyfriend. Who is looking for her. I’m not sure why they’re not just letting him land (Francisco has made it clear that Galt “wants him”) or why he even has a plane, given the established scarcity of both functioning planes and fuel, but okay, he’s circling Galt’s Gulch looking for her.
Galt reminds us that “Hank’s a good man,” though we’ve seen no evidence of this.
More voiceovers inform us that the situation is getting worse and the State Science Institute is developing “crude but lethal crowd control devices.” I think those already exist in the real world. I think they’re called something like “guns” or maybe “rooty-tooty-point-and-shooties.” This is not as stupid as Project F, though. And there’s rubble on the train tunnel from the explosion in the last movie and I guess it’s the only tunnel or something because it’s very important.
Not so important that they’d actually show a scene explaining why.
Meanwhile, Dagny is fucking around with these old men in a living room that has a giant gold dollar sign over the mantelpiece, because just like your grandmother always told you, money doesn’t buy taste.
Midas: Dagny, have you made your mind yet?
Dagny: I think so, but I’m not sure.
Me: THAT’S THE DEFINITION OF NOT HAVING MADE UP YOUR MIND fuckin’ bimbo I h8 her.
Galt tells her to follow her mind, not her heart, then says that he’s going back to New York. Francisco and Midas tell him that it’s not safe, but Galt says that if he decides to go back, it’ll be for Dagny. Awww.
This is all getting a bit 50 Shades of Grey for my taste.
Dagny remembers that her ugly bracelet that she always wears is from this guy Hank Rearden that she used to fuck in the first two movies, and maybe since she’s back from the presumed-dead, she should give him a call.
She starts with “I have something I need to tell you,” which ranks just below “we need to talk” and “I’m having this weird discharge from my genitals” in terms of things you don’t want to hear from someone you’ve slept with. However, he cuts her off at the pass and tells her that he’ll always treasure what they had, so that’s that then. More interestingly, he says, “I have to go, Frisco is waiting.” “Frisco” is Francisco’s new nickname that he didn’t have in previous movies, so I guess off-screen he and Hank got together. Nothing like mutual sloppy seconds, I guess.
I’m pretty impressed at the lack of romanticism here. Ayn Rand was into a weird kind of poly where she got to sleep with whoever she wanted and her lovers got to sleep with whoever she allowed, until she no longer liked that, but even by her standards, this is pretty cold. Rearden left his wife for her and their love was supposedly so intense over the last two movies, and they let it go with just a phone call and we never see him again, probably because Galt had him killed.
Incidentally, Randroids sign off on a breakup phone call with, you guessed it, “Who is John Galt?”
The voiceover/stock footage segments continue to get weirder. The latest update:
Jim Taggart calls a press conference to announce that his dead sister is now a zombie or some shit.
Mill workers die defending their mill from, quote, “government-sponsored union thugs,” indicating that either Rand or the screenwriter or both do not understand a) how the government works, b) how unions work, and c) how workers work.
I’m just picturing a bunch of workers with picket signs that read, “We’d rather die than cut into our boss’s profits” or something.
If you get my turn-of-the-century labour jokes, you win a prize.
And there’s an update on the all-important crisis of Minnesota wheat, because if there’s anything that will get an audience engrossed in a film, it’s the suspense over whether Minnesota wheat will be delivered to the northeast.
This is almost a decent shot. Just move Ferris like half a foot to the left and it’s a good shot. Instead it feels like the cinematographer deliberately bungled a very obvious shot that is hard to fuck up.
Anyway, this is Ferris and Stadler, who is the founder of the State Science Institute and Galt’s other former professor. Ferris has dragged him away from his all-important sciencing to inform him that his work is being used for Project F, which is the government’s top-secret torture device. I would like answers to the following questions:
1) Why doesn’t Ferris just call or text him? If Stadler’s busy, he could leave a message.
2) Why does the government need top-secret anything? There is no one opposing them. If I were running an evil totalitarian regime, I would make my scary torture device public so that no one would get it in their head to oppose me.
3) Why is it even necessary to inform Stadler that his research is being used to make a top-secret torture device? Is he supposed to be impressed? It’s not like they want him to improve it or something.
Oh, it’s all to get Stadler’s signature. Why does Ferris need Stadler’s signature? Science already belongs to the people; what does the signature do? Is the signature magical?
So he signs it, because he has all the ethics.
Will the Minnesota wheat get to the northeast? Will Dagny choose Galt or Rearden? Will the voiceovers ever fucking stop? Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:33 am (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Colorado#Gold_mining_today
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:34 am (UTC)It really doesn't look like it's built on top of a gold mine, though.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:38 am (UTC)http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/crop0815.pdf
I suspect goat & sheep farming would be primary industries being up in the mountains, and that means lots of wool clothing.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:55 am (UTC)Also, at first glance I thought the last picture was a waiter offering a man an unfeasibly large glass of brandy - which is what you should probably drink when you complete this project :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 04:02 am (UTC)Hopefully someone will get me drunk tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:37 am (UTC)a) Is that seriously stock footage of the Stony Beach, Saskatchewan grain elevator standing in for Minnesota when the grain elevator proudly and clearly proclaims itself to be in Saskatchewan
and
b) did they manage to use footage of a grain elevator, that glorious symbol of the farming co-operatives of Canada, and just conveniently forgot that it was the goddamn pinko commie socialists who built them?
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 05:49 am (UTC)WOW, this movie looks even shittier than the second one. That is amazing!
Putting aside, if you can, the truly excellent visual metaphor for the injustices of distribution under late-stage industrial capitalism, HOW THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL FUCK?
I may not know much about economics, but I do know a lot about baking. You know what you need for chocolate cake?
Chocolate.
You know what 100% is not grown in Colorado? Fucking cocoa plants.
//dies and is dead
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 02:24 am (UTC)Also to write a story about a band of survivors who get through the first 2-3 days and hole up someone, only to have internal conflict as everyone starts running out of their meds.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 12:38 pm (UTC)I do worry about my birth control pills. The way things are, I would be zombie bait during an apocalypse if I wasn't on those.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 01:37 am (UTC)At least you wouldn't be spending Christmas watching everyone else eat chocolate rum balls and going, "These are really good, want some?" >
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 08:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 01:08 pm (UTC)Barry Callebaut are one of the biggest producers of ethically sourced chocolate in Europe (they have a fairtrade line for accredited cocoa co-ops and a non-fairtrade line, but they work with all their growers to try to ensure no forced or child labour is used). I have learned many details about growing cocoa and turning it into chocolate from their website.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 01:06 pm (UTC)Also, from io9:
"The best scene in the movie involves Stephen Tobolowsky (the only actor you've heard of in this thing) explaining Ayn Rand's philosophy to Dagny at great length — they're sitting in a field together, and a huge swarm of insects is flying around them. The insects keep landing on Tobolowsky, and his face has a few bugs sitting on it by the end of the scene. Tobolowsky is a pro, and does not flinch or go off his script about the virtue of selfishness. But this is like a perfect metaphor — they're away from government interference, and also all the people who might do pest control, apparently. It's kind of weird that they didn't reshoot that scene, but I'm glad they didn't."
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 07:49 pm (UTC)I wouldn't say his acting is good though. He's as stiff and wooden as everyone else, and his lines are presumably right from the book because no human speaks like that.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 12:46 am (UTC)I don't know why I keep commenting about typefaces on these reviews. It's just a way to stave off the horror of what's actually going on here, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 10:44 pm (UTC)