What is ironic about "The Fountainhead" is that in order to save himself, the Cooper character has to convince a jury to see things his way. If he truly didn't care what people thought, why would he even try to convince them?
shareI don't think that he really tried to convince them. It felt to me more like a situation where he was summoned and asked questions. And so he answered those questions by explaining how his ideology works and what led him to do what he had to do.
It's something like you eat candy after brushing your teeth and your mom catches you afterwards. You wont try to convince her that is was a good thing but if she asks you will explain why you did it.
Frankly I found the whole premise of this film (and the novel from which it is taken) idiotic in the extreme. We are asked to admire Rand's "hero," an insufferable and arrogant man who is so utterly uncompromising in his "vision" as an architect that he can't get work.
There are two problems with this premise.
1) Whatever your profession is, be it doctor, lawyer, architect, teacher, whatever, without patients/clients/students you do not work. And if you do not work you do not eat.
2) Nothing in this world ever gets done without compromise. Howard Roark may look like a noble figure on paper (certainly Rand saw him that way), but in the end he is an insufferable boor whose gargantuan ego is his sole driving force. Which makes one wonder why Dominique finds him so attractive. One can only conclude that he was good in the sack.
Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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Yeah, the ideology is going overboard... but understandable since the "intellectual" view of the time and even today still is the equally absurd story of self sacrifice for the "greater good" of the collective people who are just as greedy, self serving and loathsome though-police nazis.
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...greedy, self serving and loathsome though-police nazis.
Anybody in the political realm who thinks they speak for everyone and that their way is the only right one. That group is nothing but self serving, greedy and ego driven.
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by IEatWords ยป 4 days ago (Sat Jan 31 2015...Anybody in the political realm who thinks they speak for everyone and that their way is the only right one. That group is nothing but self serving, greedy and ego driven.I'm not 100% sure of your view. People denounce Capitalism, Communism, Nazism and everything in between as being 'self serving'. Are you saying the best way is to have a combination? Or maybe what I'm asking is what political ideaology isn't self serving?
"Or maybe what I'm asking is what political ideaology isn't self serving?"
They all are, but I'm simply saying that it's usually the outspoken group which likes to throw labels around like candy who is ironically enough the most self serving of them all.
As for what's best... different places have different requirements and problems. As for the movie, I'm all about the individual, but even then there becomes a point where self expression can warp into self indulgence. So, the people financing a project should have some say in it's design, for example.
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I agree with you on both points. I work in advertising and I can assure you that if we said, "That's the logo we designed, we will not change it one iota, take it or leave it," we would be out of business in a month. Clients expect to be involved in the process. If they are paying, they want some input. You have to compromise to stay in business.
shareRoark was glad that the jury "saw it his way", but he would not let a belief that they would not approve of his actions determine, in any way, his actions.
shareIt always struck me as bizarre that Rand (really Rosenbaum) was jewish and she promoted how Nazis thought. They used ideas from Nietzsche regarding the "blonde beast" and the Uber Mensch where the best kind of person just does what they want and rolls over anyone in their way.
It's cool to have some vision about doing something positive and you just won't move in any other direction, but how about things that seem positive but are harmful? I never liked her philosophy so I'm not an expert on it but I wonder if what I've said crossed her mind.
The OP answered his own question when he said "in order to save himself". Roark truly doesn't care what people think, but when the government forces him to be at the mercy of a jury, he has no choice but to try to convince them, in order to save himself. It's not ironic or hypocritical at all. It's a survival situation he's trapped in.
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