Synopsis – Ayn
Rand: A Sense of Life (aynrandasenseoflife.com)
Aynrandsenseoflife (dot)com/
a-sense-of-life-synopsis
Ayn
Rand developed the theory that everyone has a subconscious view of the universe
and of man’s place in it. It is a person’s most personal, emotional response to
existence and what she termed a “sense of life.”
AYN RAND: A SENSE OF LIFE is a feature-length documentary that
illustrates the author's own sense of life. It paints a portrait of a woman
whose work has remained in print for over fifty years and continues to inspire
new generations of readers. It incorporates interviews with the people who knew
Ayn Rand best, photos from her personal archives, film clips and original
animated sequences to tell her remarkable story-a story of a “life more
compelling than fiction.”
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
For
the anthology of writings by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
see A Sense of Life.
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Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life |
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Original film poster |
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Directed by |
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Produced by |
Michael Paxton |
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Written by |
Michael Paxton |
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Narrated by |
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Music by |
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Cinematography |
Alik Sakharov |
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Edited by |
Christopher Earl |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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November 2, 1996 |
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Running time |
145 minutes |
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Country |
United States |
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Language |
English |
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life is a 1996
American documentary film written, produced, and
directed by Michael Paxton. Its focus is on novelist and
philosopher Ayn Rand,
the author of the bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged,
who promoted her philosophy of Objectivism through her books, articles,
speeches, and media appearances.
Overview[edit]
Actress Sharon Gless narrates the story of Rand's life and
an overview of her ideas. In addition to color and black-and-white archival
footage of Rand, the film includes appearances by philosophers Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff, CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace,
television interviewers Phil Donahue and Tom Snyder,
architect Frank Lloyd Wright, political figures Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky,
and Hollywood personalities Cecil B. DeMille, Edith Head, Adolphe Menjou, Marilyn Monroe,
and Robert Taylor.
History[edit]
Paxton first encountered
Rand's work in 1970 at the age of 13, when he read her novel We the Living. In 1977 he saw her speak at
the Ford Hall Forum, an experience that he later
cited as an inspiration for his approach to the documentary.]
Paxton spent four years
working on the film. It was completed in 1996 and appeared that year at
the Telluride Film Festival. On November
2, 1996, it premiered in Los Angeles with a special screening to benefit
the Ayn Rand Institute. In January 1997, it
appeared at the Slamdance Film Festival.
Reviews[edit]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film
"a pedantic specimen," "dutiful in outlook and utterly
conventional in format," and said it "does little beyond appreciating
its subject as unwaveringly as possible.” Film critic Leonard Maltin gave
the film 2.5 stars out of 4, and commented: "Too long – and pedantic – for
some viewers, but a must for Rand enthusiasts.”
Mick LaSalle of
the San Francisco Chronicle said the
film "is not what one might expect at this stage in Rand's literary
afterlife. The film doesn't make a case for her as an artist or philosopher,
nor does it delineate her place in the pantheon of letters. It just assumes her
importance and goes about telling her story . . . Obviously this was a woman of
enormous courage, tenacity and fire. That comes through enough in Ayn
Rand to make one wonder what she would have thought about the tone of
the documentary, which at times borders on sappy . . . The tone will become
grating even to anyone who is in sympathy with Rand's work. Though the
documentary concentrates on the biographical, it glosses over the major
embarrassment of her personal life – her adulterous relationship with her much
younger disciple, Nathaniel Branden . . . Ayn Rand:
A Sense of Life isn't nearly ambitious enough, but as an introduction
to an important 20th century American voice, it works.”
Todd McCarthy of Variety observed, "Benefiting
from some first-rate archival, personal and commercial film material, Michael
Paxton's Oscar-nominated effort serves as a solid and appreciative precis of
her life and world views, but doesn't get down in the trenches to illustrate how
and why she stirred up such passions pro and con, and gingerly refrains from
analyzing the paradoxes and complexities of her personality and intimate
relationships.”
Box
office[edit]
Following appearances at
festivals and other limited venues, the film's regular theatrical release was
on February 13, 1998. It earned $26,101 at two theaters in its opening weekend.
When it closed its domestic theatrical run on November 12, 1998, it had grossed
$205,246.
Awards
and nominations[edit]
The film won the Satellite Award for Best Documentary
Film. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but lost to The Long Way
Home.
—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com) - aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sense_of_life. html
A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,
an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It
sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character.
Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as
metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and
acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and
value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around
him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw
conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally
passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may
be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities,
integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that
establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world
around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or
evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling
about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling
motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all
his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is
a sense of life.
The Romantic Manifesto, 25
If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite
evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but
a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.
But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely
vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values—and one would experience a
feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those
who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral
category as the artist.)
The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous,
much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The
psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the
painting) is a man’s sense of life.
(A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,
an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.)
It is the artist’s sense of life that controls and integrates
his work, directing the innumerable choices he has to make, from the choice of
subject to the subtlest details of style. It is the viewer’s or reader’s sense
of life that responds to a work of art by a complex, yet automatic reaction of
acceptance and approval, or rejection and condemnation.
This does not mean that a sense of life is a valid criterion of
esthetic merit, either for the artist or the viewer. A sense of life is not infallible.
But a sense of life is the source of art, the psychological mechanism which
enables man to create a realm such as art.
The emotion involved in art is not an emotion in the ordinary
meaning of the term. It is experienced more as a “sense” or a “feel,” but it
has two characteristics pertaining to emotions: it is automatically immediate
and it has an intense, profoundly personal (yet undefined) value-meaning to the
individual experiencing it. The value involved is life, and the words naming
the emotion are: “This is what life means to me.”
Regardless of the nature or content of an artist’s metaphysical
views, what an art work expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser
aspects is: “This is life as I see it.” The
essential meaning of a viewer’s or reader’s response, under all of its lesser
elements, is: “This is (or is not) life as I see it.”
The Romantic Manifesto, 34
A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional
generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a
process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating.
But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of
classifying things according to the emotions they invoke—i.e., of
tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the
power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion. For
instance: a new neighborhood, a discovery, adventure, struggle, triumph—or: the
folks next door, a memorized recitation, a family picnic, a known routine, comfort.
On a more adult level: a heroic man, the skyline of New York, a sunlit
landscape, pure colors, ecstatic music—or: a humble man, an old village, a
foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music. . . . The subverbal,
subconscious criterion of selection that forms his emotional abstractions is:
“That which is important to me” or: “The kind of universe which is
right for me, in which I would feel at home.” . . .
It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as
“important,” those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in
a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life.
“It is important to understand things”—“It is important to obey
my parents”—“It is important to act on my own”—“It is important to please other
people”—“It is important to fight for what I want”—“It is important not to make
enemies”—“My life is important”—“Who am I to stick my neck out?” Man is a being
of self-made soul—and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is
made. (By “soul” I mean “consciousness.”)
The integrated sum of a man’s basic values is his sense of life.
The Romantic Manifesto, 27
A given person’s sense of life is hard to identify conceptually,
because it is hard to isolate: it is involved in everything about that person,
in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every
choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving,
talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a
“personality.”
Introspectively, one’s own sense of life is experienced as an
absolute and an irreducible primary—as that which one never questions, because
the thought of questioning it never arises. Extrospectively,
the sense of life of another person strikes one as an immediate, yet
undefinable, impression—on very short acquaintance—an impression which often
feels like certainty, yet is exasperatingly elusive, if one attempts to verify
it.
This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province
of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some
special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true: a sense of life
is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it can
be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be
understood, it has to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually. That
automatic impression—of oneself or of others—is only a lead; left untranslated,
it can be a very deceptive lead. But if and when that intangible impression is
supported by and unites with the conscious judgment of one’s mind, the result
is the most exultant form of certainty one can ever experience: it is the
integration of mind and values.
There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special
province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.
The Romantic Manifesto, 31
A culture, like an individual, has a sense of life or, rather,
the equivalent of a sense of life—an emotional atmosphere created by its
dominant philosophy, by its view of man and of existence. This emotional
atmosphere represents a culture’s dominant values and serves as the leitmotif
of a given age, setting its trends and its style.
Thus Western civilization had an Age of Reason and an Age of
Enlightenment. In those periods, the quest for reason and enlightenment was the
dominant intellectual drive and created a corresponding emotional atmosphere
that fostered these values.
Return of the
Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 130
A nation’s sense of life is formed by every individual child’s
early impressions of the world around him: of the ideas he is taught (which he
may or may not accept) and of the way of acting he observes and evaluates
(which he may evaluate correctly or not). And although there are exceptions at
both ends of the psychological spectrum—men whose sense of life is better
(truer philosophically) or worse than that of their fellow-citizens—the
majority develop the essentials of the same subconscious philosophy. This is
the source of what we observe as “national characteristics.”
. . . .
Just as an individual’s sense of life can be better or worse
than his conscious convictions, so can a nation’s. And just as an individual
who has never translated his sense of life into conscious convictions is in
terrible danger—no matter how good his subconscious values—so is a nation.
This is the position
of America today.
If America is to be saved from destruction—specifically, from
dictatorship—she will be saved by her sense of life.
Philosophy: Who Needs
It, 206
A sense of life is not a substitute for explicit knowledge.
Values which one cannot identify, but merely senses implicitly, are not in
one’s control. One cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of
action is needed to gain and/or keep them. One can lose or betray them without
knowing it.
Philosophy: Who Needs
It, 210