The Fountainhead: programme notes and a short account of the discussion
The Fountainhead: Programme Notes (pdf)
For all Big Picture events we produce our own programme notes, with full cast and production information. They’re free with the price of your ticket and summarise some aspects of the film as a starting point for discussion. If you missed the film, or are just interested in finding out more, we make them available online after the screening.
A few brief notes on the post-film discussion:
We began with architecture. America has in fact always been more open to modernism than The Fountainhead suggests, and indeed where successful European modernist architects like Mies van der Rohe chose to practice. Moreover, some architects moved between styles: the skyscraper architect Raymond Hood was mentioned. His career began with the kind of classicism and baroque despised by Roark, and ended in the international style of the Daily News building.
Comparisons were made between Rand’s source novel and the film (many people thought Atlas Shrugged was a better achievement by Rand). The film compresses much of the earlier part of the novel into a few scenes, and dramatically curtails the involvement of some of the characters, like Paul Keating. The lack of roundedness of some of the characters (Roark was described, aptly, as ‘a slab’) was seen as Rand’s deliberate strategy: picking extremes of character in order to demonstrate her Objectivist philosophy.
Though Objectivism might be apprehended through The Fountainhead as being fundamentally about independence and creative vision the founding principle of Objectivism is reason. (The idea of a system of ethics built on reason is close to the subjects of some recent Big Ideas events like Why should we do what we should do? and Is there an art to living?) The question of certainly was also raised: many systems of ethics claim to proceed from reason, but all reach different conclusions. How can they be reconciled?
Lastly, if you were slightly overwhelmed by the ideas and drama of The Fountainhead, you might find this summation of the film amusing.
