How Great is Ayn Rand? David Bentley Hart… Shrugs.

Last updated on: October 2, 2012 at 6:07 pm by Jeffrey Overstreet

How Great is Ayn Rand? David Bentley Hart… Shrugs. 2012-10-02T18:07:17-06:00 Jeffrey Overstreet

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In the current issue of First Things, David Bentley Hart delivers a memorable rant on Rand.

What does this have to do with Terrence Malick? Read on!

Hart writes:

Not long after seeing the trailer for Atlas Shrugged, I came across the trailer for quite a different kind of film: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Malick is the world’s greatest living filmmaker, and this project has been with him for years. The two minutes or so of clips that have been released are far more beautiful, moving, and profound than anything associated with the name of Ayn Rand could ever be. “There are two ways through life,” a woman’s voice announces as the trailer opens: “the way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one to follow.” That is arguably the great theme of all of Malick’s finest work; and I suspect that the deeper question the film poses is whether these two ways can become one. If what little I have heard about the film is right, moreover, the answer will have something to do with a love capable of embracing all things, and of both granting and receiving forgiveness. But we shall see.

Do not go to see Atlas Shrugged. Do not encourage those people. Go instead to The Tree of Life, which—whether it should prove a triumph or a failure—will be the work of a remarkable artist who really does have something to tell us about both nature and grace (two things about which Rand knew absolutely nothing). So make the wise cinematic choice here, for the good of your own soul, but also for the sake of a rapidly foundering civilization.

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