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Customer Reviews of Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life

A tribute to Ayn Rand by her fans.
A documentary about Ayn Rand should be interesting to watch whether you agree with all or some of her philosophy or not. The problem with "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life" is that it is a tribute to her rather than a biography. It does tell the story of her life, but it does it in a way that seems aimed at her fans and followers rather than to the general public. The film seems to preach what a perfect person Rand was, and imply that those who criticize her are ignorant. Everything about Russia is bad, everything about America is good (are there no other countries in the world, by the way?). This oversimplified worldview - as well as the film's tendencies to get sentimental - hurts the credibility of the movie. <
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>The running time is almost two and a half hours and it should have been shorter. Early on in the movie, there's a sequence of footage from silent films that Rand liked to watch as a child, and later there are some details that are just not very interesting, such as the one that she had to move because she had a cat, and that she was excited to get the chance to drive a train when researching a book. If some of these things were taken out the film would have been better paced. Although it's fun to see talk show footage of Rand, it can get a bit repetitive. <
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>Overall, this film is somewhat interesting to watch if you take it for what it is - a tribute made by her fans. A film on this subject could have been much better though.

Good biography of a unique writer and philosopher
I've been interested in Ayn Rand ever since I read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was only 22 years old. I didn't quite get everything Ayn was trying to say in that book at the time, and I chalked it up to my lack of life experience given my youth. When I was 40, I ran across this documentary on public TV. I figured that since 18 years had passed, watching this documentary combined with my maturity would enable me to understand Ayn Rand. <
>This biography is a very sanitized version of Ayn Rand's life. The biography is accurate if not complete, since there is a lack of balance in the presentation due to the absence of information that shows the flawed and even somewhat "kookie" facets of the woman. For example, she encouraged her followers to smoke to highlight mankind's dominance over fire. The film also makes out her relationship with her husband, Frank, to be an ideal romance that lasted for decades. In fact, Ayn cheated on Frank for years with colleague Nathaniel Branden. To give her credit, she was true to her philosophy in being "objective" about the affair in the sense that she insisted that both her and Branden's spouse know what was going on. She ceased being objective, though, when Branden tired of her and began having an affair with a younger woman. She threw Branden and his research out the door with all of the emotion of any human being whose heart was being "subjectively" stomped on. I bring these points up not for the purpose of character assassination. Instead, I think that that it is difficult to get a balanced view of someone whose life work was pronouncing how life should be lived without examining the both the flaws and triumphs in that person's own life. <
>The documentary did give me some insight into Ayn Rand's philosophy, though, and I'll have to say that she seems to be someone who threw the baby out with the bath water at every turn. As a youth in Russia, prior to the Russian revolution, she saw the failure of the Russian orthodox church to connect with the parishioners and help their lives in any way. This caused her to become an atheist without causing her to explore if it was in fact that this particular institution of religion was the failure, rather than the concept of God. After the revolution she saw the utter failure of the policies of Communism, and this caused her to believe that pure unadulterated capitalism is the only economic system that works, not bothering to realize that there might be a third way that looks out for society's weaker members while also rewarding enterprise and hard work. <
>The fact that Ayn was what is an "odd bird" in 21st century America - an atheist capitalist - can only make me wonder what she would have to say about today's situation of fundamentalist Christian dogma intertwined with cut-throat capitalism that has become today's Republican party. I can't imagine she'd have anything good to say about it, and on that we would be in agreement. <
>Thus, if you are interested in learning the main points about Ayn Rand's life, this is a good source for the facts and even some insights - particularly good are the clips from her appearances on the Donahue show shortly before her death. However, realize that this biography is somewhat sanitized. <
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