How to Burn Down Your Life
Truffaut's film and the novel from which it is adapted have both been misunderstood for too long. To start with, you have to understand that Bradbury's novels, plays, and story are almost always allegorical - so you have to look for meanings on more than one level. Truffaut's film of Fahrenheit 451 captures all of the allegorical levels of the novel. To explain: One of the many reasons human beings read and write books is because we have a deep need to know if our inner experiences are shared by others - this need can only be answered within the context of an intimate relationship, either with another human being or with a book, which allows us to reveal or to be revealed as we are. The more the State controls the use of language, the more we are controlled. In Bradbury's novel the State effectively limits intimacy by forbidding books; and since the only reference to reality is dictated by the State, what can Montag or his wife know of love? How intimate can their relationship...
BURN, BABY, BURN...
Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book paper will burn. It is the basis for the premise of this film, which is based upon the Ray Bradbury's classic sci-fi novel of the same name. The film takes the viewer to a stark future in which firemen start fires rather than put them out. Their main mission appears to be to root out books, wherever they may be found, and burn them. Those who harbor books in their home are breaking the law and are subject to arrest by the state. The written word is simply forbidden.
Oskar Werner plays the role of Guy Montag, a fireman who is married to a beautiful air-head named Linda, who spends her days popping pills, while glued to a wall screen TV. Played with appropriate bubble-brained inertia by the talented Julie Christie, this is just one of the dual roles she plays in this film. The other role is that of Clarisse, a would be school teacher and seeming misfit in that society, as she actually likes to talk about ideas, the very reason...
There Are People Who Don't Like This Film?! Hard To Believe!
I first saw this film when it was released a few decades ago and loved it. I just watched it again last night and still loved it. As a HUGE book lover, I was absolutely mesmerized by this tale of a society that not only has censored all books, but also has firemen who hunt down culprits who harbor books and then burn them at 451 degrees, the heat needed to burn paper. It is French director Truffaut's only English language film, which does not hurt it in the least. This is an incredibly dull society of people who don't do much other than sit in front of tv-like screens watching approved programing put on by the state. Some of them also go to work on public transit although they do nothing that requires reading. There are no road signs, no newspapers, no menus, not a shred of visible written matter anywhere in this society. Children in schoolrooms do solely mass oral memorization. For written matter gives people ideas and this society decides it is better to live without ideas...
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