[Apologies for the lack of timestamps on the Challengers quotations. I do not have access to the movie outside of having seen it in theaters.]

This past week, I saw Challengers and had two main thoughts coming out of the movie. One, the soundtrack was truly phenomenal. Two, how remarkably similar it seems to The Fountainhead, or at least, the logical conclusion of Ayn Rand’s philosophy in the novel when placed into the real world.

Superficially, the similarities between the two works are obvious. They both contain incredibly complicated love polygons. Though Luca Guadagnino and Ayn Rand have very different conceptions of love, their works center on characters who struggle on how to integrate into the fabric of their lives. Most importantly, exceptionalism is key to both works.

A little primer on Ayn Rand and her philosophy is vital in understanding how central exceptionalism is to her philosophy, Objectivism. Rand herself described it as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Somewhat controversially, she completely rejected altruism and declared self-interest as the highest human ideal.

This counterintuitive notion is refined in The Fountainhead[spoiler alert!]. She places Howard Roark, the protagonist, in an interwar New York as the Objectivist man par excellence. He lives and breathes architecture and designs buildings for its own sake. Throughout the novel he is reviled, disavowed, fired, praised, smeared, and sued and throughout all of this, he suffers only on the surface— for he does his work for his own sake and without any regard for public opinion, who benefits from his buildings, and how much money he makes. He is selfish, in the Objectivist sense, because he does it purely for himself. Rand presents an array of characters who prey on public opinion, seek power, and smash other men’s reputations— and declares them the true “altruists.”

It is obvious that Rand is relying on some radical definitions. Altruism is self-sacrifice, not in the act of helping another; it is saying that the act of giving is it self worthy without even knowing who the beneficiary of the gift is. She applies this logic to one’s convictions as well— as selfish creatures, anyone who is willing to give up their personal belief to another is committing an unspeakable act of evil.

Rand’s view of romantic love also stems from her conception of ethical selfishness. In her work The Virtue of Selfishness, she defines it as “the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another” person’s virtues integrated with sexual desire. It is the ultimate passion of and worship of man at his or her highest. However, Randian love is always secondary to self-fulfillment and never comes from a place of sacrifice, but from admiration. Howard Roark says as much to Dominique Francon: refuses to become her “whole existence,” and sends her off— to marry, and have sex with, his worst enemies— so that she can eventually return to him with true self-admiration. (Rand, 328)

Though the dialogue and relationships in The Fountainhead are incredibly complex, the characters themselves are remarkably simple. Roark is the ideal man, Wynand is the man who could have been, Keating is the man of vanity, and Toohey is the man who “never could have been– and knows it.” (Notes of Ayn Rand on The Fountainhead) Part of the reason the book works is that the characters never change internally. Keating must testify against Roark, even if he recognizes the validity of Roark’s worldview. Wynand must keep his newspaper open in the analogous situation that caused Roark to blow up the Cortland projects.

In Challengers, the characters are not nearly so predictable. At the beginning of the film, Tashi is the only one who fits into a neat Objectivist archetype. She loves, lives, and breathes tennis; she bases her love life on it when she picks between Art and Patrick based on who wins their tennis match. The only crack in her shell in the first half of the movie is in her decision to attend Stanford instead of going pro. She, like Howard Roark, has a single-minded view of life that transcends love affairs or side pursuits.

The facade comes crashing down when blows out her knee in one of the movie’s most shocking scenes. She loses her ability to do what she loves, an impossibility for Howard Roark or for the heroes of Ayn Rand’s novels. Rand’s heroes, no matter what happens in adverse circumstances, maintain their unconquerable minds. When Roark is penniless, discredited, and even when he faces the possibility of prison time— he may not be able to practice as an architect, but he never loses his ability to do so. For the Objectivist hero, losing this ability would break them.

Indeed, with that misstep Tashi shatters both her knee and her world view. With a small delay, she is forced into a different role from the novel— that of Dominique Francon. Rand describes Francon as a “priestess” and the perfect foil for the perfect man. Aside from revealing her sexist views— she famously was against a female president— this characterization also allows us to define the mode of her love of Howard Roark: “hero-worship.” After breaking up with Patrick, she eventually turns herself into a kind of priestess for Art, coaching him and guiding his career.

Of course, this kind of transition is near impossible in an Objectivist sense. An Objectivist ideal or pursuit is just that— objective and unchanging. Even when she fills the closest thing the movie has to a Roark-type figure, it is not her who displays the purest form of Objectivist love— it is Patrick. Patrick declares that he is Tashi’s peer, not her cheerleader. He wants a form of love where they can each fully respect each other for what they are, but Tashi cannot give him that— because she feels his career is pitiful. Rand, coincidentally, refers to pity as a “monstrous feeling,” incompatible with virtue or love.

Usurped from her role as the human ideal, she assumes the role of Art’s priestess. She coaches him into a renowned tennis player. At this point, their relationship appears healthy and Patrick appears to be the one who is lost. Soon, though, a confrontation with Patrick the night before the titular match forces Tashi to admit what she has been hiding— she loves Art for his tennis capability and only his tennis capability. After having lost her own chances, she wants to live vicariously through Art. Patrick calls her bluff that she actually loves Art; she concedes and sleeps with Patrick, presumably so he will be more likely to throw the game with Art and allow Tashi to continue her concocted dream.

To be clear, the act of sleeping with Patrick is not in itself a betrayal of Objectivist values. The Fountainhead has tons of sleeping around within and out of wedlock, and no character is really very upset by it— precisely because they respect the rationale and do not focus on the act itself. Roark is not upset by Dominique Francon marrying Peter Keating because he knows she will come back to him as a woman who can stand on his own two feet. When Francon leaves Wynand for Roark at the conclusion of the novel, he knows and respects that she loves Roark for being the man that he could never be. Cheating is only a sin if you betray your personal values while doing so.

Tashi betrays herself in marrying Art and both in actually cheating on him and the reason she cheats on him. She marries Art because she wants him to live her dream, not because she loves him for his own ideals. When he starts losing those ideals, she not only stops loving him but also gives up on the ideal— and turns to mortal sin as defined by Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead: she tries to exalt him in the eyes of the public without actually making him a better tennis player. She betrays her ultimate value— tennis— and trades it away for the perception of excellence.

Art is the only one of the three who had no potential to be a Howard Roark, but he ironically approaches the closest to the Objectivist ideal and its conception of love. In the beginning, Art is a conniver, seeking to steal Tashi for himself. By the end, though, he has developed a very real love for Tashi: he loves her unbridled passion, for her beauty, and for everything that she is. He recognizes that he has been living a lie: tennis is not the pinnacle of his life, and he wishes to retire. Tashi has recognized this for a long time and basically threatens to leave him if he does not win. We do not get to see the result of this choice— the movie ends at the conclusion of the match— but we never see him betraying himself and his own values.

From a nominal perspective, the ending of the movie is entirely unsatisfying. Sure, Art and Patrick may be friends— or more than friends— again, but the infidelity and deeper issues are entirely unresolved. If we watch the movie from an Objectivist perspective, we do not have this problem. Patrick and Art give up their acting hats; Art stops pretending this match does not matter due to his career maturity and Patrick stops entertaining the idea of throwing the match. Tashi, who had been anxiously watching to see if Patrick would lose on purpose, discovers she is overjoyed that he has not. For the first time in many years, it is simply good tennis.

I disagree with Ayn Rand on many things, but I do find her vision of what love is quite compelling. Tashi, Art and Patrick have a triangle complicated by the fact that they cannot be honest with themselves— so how can we expect them to be honest with their respective partners? At the end of the movie, if all is not right in the world, they have all at least found a true version of themselves.