Viking Night: Fahrenheit 451
By Bruce Hall
July 27, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This way, you get to say that you are not “oppressing” people – you’re “protecting” them!
So here’s the thing about Fahrenheit 451. It concerns a totalitarian society, all right. Like most such places, there are plenty of jackbooted goons walking around, ready to go through your pockets or break your elbows, depending on the day. And like most such places, the control of information plays a critical part in making sure your citizens have the freedom to do whatever they want to do. As long as it’s what YOU want them to do.
Needless to say, this means book burnings - and a LOT of them. You can’t have your loyal citizens’ minds poisoned by non-Party approved literature, after all. But the fictional government of Fahrenheit 451 takes censorship to a whole new level by outlawing not just all books, but all forms of writing.
Think about that for a moment.
People speak a language, but nobody writes anything down, ever. There are no books, no magazines, no billboards with words on them – there aren’t even credits or title cards in TV shows. And to be caught with anything like this is punishable by, well, whatever the government feels like doing to you that day. This has all sorts of mind boggling ramifications, but we’ll get to all that in a second.
First, I want to point out that the film version of Fahrenheit 451 is based on a book by the iconic Ray Bradbury, and was written and directed by the iconic François Truffaut. If you don’t know who those people are, don’t worry about it. What LeBron James is to Cleveland, these guys are to science fiction and French cinema, respectively. The reason I bring that up is because Truffaut’s very first decision sets the tone for the entire film, in my mind.
As the film starts, there are no credits or title cards. Remember what I said earlier? You are immersed in this crazy world from go. All the credits are spoken behind a montage of residential TV antennas – which we learn later are used by the government to beam propaganda straight into your home, night and day. It’s disorienting and at first, seems pretentious – until you realize that it’s all part of the world-building necessary to make such an absurd society believable. It’s almost mesmerizing – in stark contrast to what happens next.
We meet Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), a pleasant looking, soft spoken member of the Firemen. Just like in our world, Firemen slide down a pole when there’s an alarm and jump on a big red truck. It has a siren, flashing lights, and as they tear across the countryside, children point and gawk in wonder. You don’t notice until the fire truck pulls up to a residence that there are no water tanks on board. Nope. These Firemen do not put out fires. They’re looking for books, which are contraband. When they find books, they burn them.
See? Firemen!
The Firemen have a network of Fire Boxes all around town. If you know someone who has books, you can drop the dime on them using a Fire Box. A bright red truck will pull up to this person’s house, where Montag and his friends will ransack the place and burn all the books they find right on their front lawn. And if the occupants of the house weren’t smart enough to be a hundred miles away, the police arrive to carry them away, never to be seen again.
I’ve never had to live under a totalitarian regime, so I’ve only ever seen this kind of thing in documentaries. But Truffaut goes to great lengths to burn actual copies of actual books, the majority of them classics. The camera lingers on them as they crackle and pop, the words readable and in some cases recognizable. At first it seems gratuitous, like Fascist porn or something. But the imagery is stark – the written word means something, and when you stop and consider the pre-internet world these people live in, you realize that you are watching a genocide of knowledge.
Stuff like this is why Truffaut is kind of a big deal.
You know what else is a big deal? Flame throwers! Montag is pretty good with one, and he goes about his job, burning the sum of all human knowledge, wearing the placid expression of an obedient drone. The man loves his work, and doesn’t even seem to mind when his micromanaging Captain (Cyril Cusack) speaks to him in the third person and constantly poses petty sociological conundrums designed to keep him on his toes. Montag is a good apple, next in line for a promotion at the Firehouse.
Sounds great, right? Just imagine if all you had to do was get up in the morning, put a blank, dopey expression on your face, spend all day burning books with a flame thrower, and then go home? What could be better or more fulfilling? Well, Montag is not a happy man, as it turns out. He’s a thoughtful type – a deep thinker. And this attracts the attention of a fellow traveler one day, as he heads home on the train. Her name is Clarisse (Julie Christie), and she’s just the perkiest goddamn person who has ever walked the face of the earth.
She explains that she’s a schoolteacher and is having trouble at work. She’s too much of a free thinker, which has attracted the wrong kind of attention. She asks Montag about his job, and whether he ever reads any of the books he burns. Montag views this as unthinkable, oblivious to the seed that’s been planted in his head. This is important, because waiting for him at home is his lazy, vapid wife (also played by Julie Christie) Linda. She cooks, and cleans, and never argues. The rest of the time she sits in front of the television, drinking State distilled liquor, taking State rationed tranquilizers, and watching what passes for entertainment in a society where you’re not allowed to write anything down.
While this may be Don Draper’s dream girl, Montag – fresh off his mind expanding conversation with Clarisse – suddenly realizes how pointless his life is. He spends his day robotically burning books, while his wife spends hers taking drugs and sitting in front of an admittedly impressive 52-inch flat screen. He starts to wonder if there’s more to life. He tries to have substantive conversation with his wife, but suddenly realizes how tedious she is. He starts to yearn. He starts to collect books.
He starts to read.
You can see where this is going. As Montag becomes more curious about the world he begins to see why the government has deemed it an “anti-social” activity. He begins to question things. He learns that he is a monster, and his wife and her friends are “zombies,” as he calls them. He begins to see with new eyes, and begins to develop a very dangerous friendship with Clarisse. And it’s not because she’s literally just as pretty as his wife – it’s because when you’re up for a promotion, the Firemen watch everything you do, and record everyone you associate with. Montag’s compassion and curiosity might be his best qualities, but they’re not qualities that are necessary to be a Fireman.
Maybe the best thing I can say about it is that the longer I watched, the more I really thought about what it would mean to live in that kind of world. Can you imagine, living under a regime dedicated to crushing individuality so completely it would keep Vladimir Putin up at night? What if all your entertainment was delivered at a first grade level? They’d HAVE to keep people on drugs just to keep them from realizing how pointless it all was!
It really is chilling, when you think about it. And then you start noticing things like, when Montag reads a book for the first time, he can already read. Wait, what? In fact, everyone in this movie seems to be able to read well enough to look at the cover of a book and say who wrote it and what it’s about. Where the hell does anyone learn to read in a completely illiterate society? Also, how do super complex tasks get done, like designing airplanes and efficiently oppressing millions of people under the gauntlet of a faceless bureaucracy happen without writing anything down?
But of course, Fahrenheit 451 is not meant to be taken literally. For most of its runtime, it’s a very immersive, if not always completely engaging yarn about what nourishes the human spirit and gives life meaning. Knowledge is what makes us a society, what gives meaning and context to life and what enriches our interaction with others. Fahrenheit 451 does a well enough job of alluding to this, but I suspect a bit of it was lost in translation, as this was Truffaut’s only English language film. The dialogue is rather inelegant, although several characters are given rather absorbing monologues.
The acting is serviceable, even workmanlike. And that’s not a knock on the actors, really. Despite the thought provoking premise, whatever passion Truffaut may have had for this project doesn’t register in the individual onscreen performances. I see it more in the world building – the attention to detail creating this society and its odd way of life. I see it more in the film’s DNA. This is a broad, thematic experience which is best absorbed and processed as a whole. This is more than a mere combination of moving picture, song, and human voice. It’s a statement, comprised of all those things.
Perhaps this is best expressed by the last two scenes in the film which no, I will not spoil. They are interminably long, brutally pedantic and mind numbingly obvious. But it only seems that way if you’re trying to push the story forward with your expectations, because you’re an impatient jerk. If you’re willing to sit back and let the film present itself to you, you will understand. Each of us is a vessel, and how much and of what we put into it is entirely our choice. And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Dammit, Truffaut, you got me.