The troubled Ayn Rand-movie is definitely Darren Aronofsky’s weirdest hour. And considering his earlier Pi, that’s saying quite a lot.
Didn’t catch this in the big screen, where a single copy spent something like a week of two in Finland, bought a dvd from Virgin in New York to ensure a timely viewing.
I’m not at all familiar with the original, and cannot thus comment on how the novel is captured on screen. As a movie the three-fold story is not that great – rambling, confusing and obscure to the point where pretty much the entire story needs to be tied together in the watcher’s head. Not your typical Hollywood-fare, that’s for sure – and the difficulty of the film wasn’t really rewarded neither in the box office where it bombed nor by the vast majority of critics.
It’s not a bad movie by any means, I just found it boring and even more worrisomely: completely detached emotionally – the characters plain did not work for me. But indeed, it’s not a bad movie at all, the underlying message of hope is understated and the chronologically disparate storylines are crafted with great visuals. Altogether it’s an experience so much on the odd side that it’s worth a shot.