The Awfulness of Ayn Rand…and Malick’s Sublime Film on Nature and Grace, ‘The Tree of Life’
At the conclusion of his essay on “The Trouble with Ayn Rand,” David Bentley Hart recommends skipping the new film version of Atlas Shrugged, the novel of a writer who, like Nietzsche, despised Christian morality and exalted selfishness, who thought Mickey Spillane a greater artist than Shakespeare, and of whose own novels Hart says that what puts them in a class of their own is how sublimely awful they are.
Even so, the cardboard characters, the ludicrous dialogue, the bloated perorations, the predictable plotting, the lunatic repetitiousness and banality, the shockingly syrupy romance—it all goes to create a uniquely nauseating effect: at once mephitic and cloying, at once sulfur and cotton candy.
Instead, Hart recommends spending our money on the latest work of a real artist with a deeply religious sensibility, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. I took his advice. The Tree of Life is a masterpiece. You can see the trailer of Malick’s movie here:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/WXRYA1dxP_0
I was curious to see how critics saw the movie. The only one, from my perspective, who got to the heart of the film was Fr. Robert Barron, who picked up on the opening quote from Job 38 (“Where were you..?). Some critics saw the film as a middle-aged man’s attempt to find meaning in his life and his place in eternity and the universe. Yes, the film is that but it is so by means of an extended meditation on God’s response to Job’s reproach about why he allows evil to happen. God does not answer Job directly but takes him instead on a tour of the cosmos. Malick’s mimics God’s answer. It is a film about nature, grace, and God’s Providence. Here is Fr. Barron’s review of the Malick movie:
Did Ayn Rand really say that she thought MIckey Spillane superior to Shakespeare? When I was sixteen and resentful of then current literary theorists, I asked whether criticism necessary at all. My intuition told me precisely that there must be an objective reason why Shakespeare is superior to Mickey Spillane, which any fool can see.
That thought was the given of my theorising. Between watching one interview with Ayn Rand and looking at the filmof The Fountaihead, I have since handled anything dealing with her with tongs and a clothespin on my nose. Your article confirms my ramblings of over fifty years ago.
I found this comment by Flannery O’Connor here: [link to
http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/flannery-oconnor-on-ayn-rand/ ]
“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky”.
I doubt Rand would have been impressed since she surely thought Spillane a better writer than Dostoyevsky too.