Viking Night: Fahrenheit 451
By Bruce Hall
July 27, 2016
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.
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