Man, that sounds stupidly surrealistic, but no, this isn't exactly what I was expecting from David Lynch's first film, although I don't guess you can ever predict what kind of film a three-year-old will make. I heard that this guy is a passionate architect, but he must really love his job if he built a fountain for his head. No matter its failings, the film will make you think, although not neccessarily in the way Ayn Rand would like you to do. However, the strong direction by King Vidor matches the exuberance of the script and manages to create an interesting world full of tall buildings for the characters to dwell in. However, Nietzsche would be horrified by how Ayn Rand sees his philosophy of individualism and when she tries to link this philosophy to American values and capitalism (see Roark's monologue in the court), the whole endeavor seems ludicrous. I suppose Ayn Rand wants us to see Roark as an exemplar, but he is no realistic character and he lacks depth - he is not human in other words.

At least Wynand faces some internal struggles. What is compelling though is how secondary characters react to him and how they are magnetized to his personality like Wynand does (Massey). A character like Roark (Gary Cooper) is an unstoppable force of nature, an iron will - it cannot possibly be good material for a drama. They are so overdone that one cannot take the drama seriously.

Consider the opening montage of scenes, where different people are attempting to make the ultra-individualist protagonist conform to public taste. The characters are caricatures of philosophical concepts to the point that the situations they find themselves in seem to be fabrications just to showcase their singularity. Just no.Utterly ridiculous yet strangely compelling. In all honesty, half the time I missed who was in a relationship with whom. Add to that the selfish unlikable characters. At least after that, there was somewhat of a story, but it was also pretty slow and of course, there was plenty of philosophy sprinkled throughout. The first chapter (was this some kind of intro, I’m thinking?) turned me off immediately via all the philosophy. Maybe a good thing I tuned it out because there didn’t appear to be a single likable character, as far as I could tell, from the bits and pieces I did pay attention to. I listened to the (lllllooooonnnnngggg) audio, and tuned much of it out, as it was boring. There are relationships in the story, but I’m not sure how they happen given how selfish everyone is. He doesn’t want to design what others hire him to, just what he wants. He’s an architect who wants to only design what he wants. This is something about architects, architecture, philosophy, and super-selfish people, particularly the main character, Howard Roark.

The fountainhead book buy