Urban Planning and Transportation of Utah writes a weekly blog centered around Amtrak. “This week at Amtrak, Vol. 8 No 9″ begins,
For something completely different, This Week goes to the movies, plus some observations by URPA Vice President of Corporate Communications Russ Jackson.
To be clear, Atlas Shrugged may not win any Academy awards. But that is not the point. The tale behind bringing Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel to the big screen is almost as long as the book itself. Loathed or loved, public sentiment is anything but neutral for Atlas Shrugged …
From a literary standpoint, the movie succeeds. All the main points are visited: Hard work, and the virtue of the reward for such hard work, lead to progress; rewarding those who do not contribute will ultimately lead to ruin; the inequity of expecting industry to respond to critics whose sole job it is to criticize. That is not, however, the reason one goes to the movie theater.
In spite of it all, the film does work. It is rather dense, and as such will sail clear over the heads of the average moviegoer. It is a thinking movie for a thinking audience. Is the free market the answer to all our problems? Of course not; but neither is the free market so infinitely large as to subsidize everything else. Some may see this as a political statement, others as social commentary. In the words of Alfred Hitchcock, “It’s only a movie.”
I guess Amtrak executives cannot pass up the opportunity to write about trains, especially when the movie centers around the protagonist’s fight to save her railroad. Thanks for the plug, Mr. Jackson.