Lets A Go
What maybe surprising to those that have read any of these reviews, the amount of readers this is indicating is certainly being near or is absolute 0, is that I try to do as much reading as possible to balance out the amount of movies I try and watch. With the following text being one of the few that I will get around to writing something, I wouldn't call it an essay but a half full glass review would be more indicative, that reflects two adaptations of a novel that I just finished the other day.
The Recommendation
A person close to me had put a gun to my head and demanded that I go about in reading Fahrenheit 451 if I knew what was good for me or else. I had actually planned on watching Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor that very Saturday afternoon but my plans changed and so dear readers, I went about in reading the book.
Quick Thoughts
I finished the book and I can kind of see why its important and all the love for it but, for lack of a better word, the structure of the fucking thing doesn't really do the material justice. From what I learned reading about the writing sessions that Bradbury had with this novel, he had gone about in grabbing various pieces from other various stories he had written and stitched the pieces together to come up with the basic novel. Adding a couple thousand more words to make it truly novel length and in the end the final book we have today.
Reading this factoid after reading the book goes about in explaining the strange patched together feeling the overall novel has. It's pieces that sort of fit together but feel more awkward than it should be. Uneven flow all throughout for me personally. Not a perfect novel but it is pretty solid science fiction about censorship and more importantly, the prescient vision of the decay of our societies willingness to engage in material that may or may not be up to their liking
The Recent Adaptation
So I read the book and thought that
was cool then I saw Shock Corridor and goddamn is that movie real fucking great. Hard hitting and pulls no punches. Sam Fuller always delivers even when he doesn't like a film that I will talk about later or never depending on how I feel.
Now after having seen Shock Corridor, I saw that it was only around 1:40 am and had time to try and squeeze one more movie before heading off to bed. In this span of time lasting seconds but feeling like years, I had the inkling to try and see if there were any adaptations available to check out and lo and behold, I see one for immediate viewing on one of those terribly overpriced streaming services that I have been forced to indulge in.
And so it goes with the advent of terrible streaming platforms, I was given the opportunity of watching this and I did to my dismay.
The Movie
To be fair, the material in the book doesn't necessarily need to be a one to one adaptation into a film since there some stuff that probably can't be pulled off unless it was animated. The biggest hurdle is the concept of the Mechanized Hound in the novel. This sentient machine dog that would chase down these book readers and drug them before the cops came to arrest them. The big chase in the novel is fueled by the mechanical hound tracking down Guy Montag and while it works great in the novel, there is no way to pull this off in a film. This recent film goes about in jettisoning that material which is fine but also makes some other changes/modifications that I see as far more detrimental to the overall film and ultimately not only make it a bad adaptation but also a pretty bad movie in general.
In the future, Firemen no longer stop
fires but instead start fires. They start fires for this totalitarian
government that is suppressing people being able to have this
knowledge. For this knowledge is too cumbersome and causes too much
pain but there's a revolution going on maaan. One that nobody can
see. And there is only one man to lead the revolution or as the film
plays out, fumble his way into the revolution and ultimately destroy
it. That man is Guy Montag. Also, the Ominus is something to look out for. A poor man's MacGuffin and so we shall call it the McGuffy.
Though the summary isn't necessarily the most serious write up, its the most honest. Guy Montag is no longer a clean slate from which his interest in books breaks his brain. Instead, this Guy Montag is one that is haunted by the memory of his father's books being burned. Though i'm pretty sure his dad doesn't die or anything really tragic as that but I can't be sure since the movie does a pretty bad job of being able to commit to the tragedy itself that is haunting Guy Montag.
Fire Chief Beatty is no longer the man who can accept willingly and with gusto that books should not exist but instead is also a man haunted by the job he does and the books that he has read. Everyone is haunted.The world is haunted. I am haunted. By the ghost of Dennis Hopper which is actually a pretty good time overall.
Clarisse is no longer a girl that lives her life completely opposite of how everyone else in society lives. As she was a character that saw everyone else stagnate themselves in this state of distraction while she lives in the moment. Wanting to do nothing more but exist in the world instead of exuding her life force by watching television. Modern day Clarisse is instead a haunted woman along with all the other haunted members of society who was part of a revolutionary cell, or I suppose THE revolutionary cell, but is now a informant for Fire Chief Beatty as she can do nothing else but fink to get by.
The characters and their motives are vastly different and honestly vastly inferior to those of the novels with the wholly original constructed revolutionary party seeming to be the most disappointing aspect of it all. They are creating a super hard-drive called the Omnius. In the Omnius, all information will be stored. The value of this information? Pretty important I guess. At least that's what the movie is trying to tell me again and again instead of showing me but then again, books are made to be read by the individual and who are these individuals that will benefit from these books? A lot of effort is placed on the Omnius but nothing really seems to placate that the thing is actually worthwhile. Also, how do we store this information? In the DNA of a bird that needs to reach Canada.
Guy Montag reads a book, I think it was Notes from the Underground, and it breaks his brain and he sneaks out into the night going undercover to reach out to Clarisse and they then become friends and read to each other and its all very not good because beautiful people reading books always seems to give off a clip art vibe and ultimately Guy Montag gets in touch of the revolutionary cell while being tracked down by Beatty and inadvertently destroys the entire revolutionary cell.
It's a pretty funny plot contrivance of needing to have this big showdown between Guy and Beatty that ends up being nothing more than a wet fart. Montag letting go the super smart bird from the burning farm and Beatty screaming in agony as he has to burn Montag alive. Why? Some sentimental nonsense is the feeling I have but maybe it was meant to be a genuine sense of sacrifice. To become a martyr even though he fumbled the ball and destroyed the revolution. I mean other members are killed and some get arrested so maybe the revolution lives on. The bird flies away though.
Its hard to say how much of the book is in the movie since they got rid of one of the most important aspects which was the Montags wife Mildred Montage. She was supposed to be the central example of what this society was as well as the example of what the destroyed individual strives to be in this repressive society but maybe the character stuff was too boring? I've been trying to figure out a good reason as to why to jettison her out of the movie but I suppose they wanted a love story of Clarisse and Montag to be the true heart of the movie.
I can't remember much regarding the cinematography except the never ending dreariness of how the world was since books don't exist and regarding the music that played, I sure can't remember a tune so maybe there wasn't anything worthwhile in the first place to listen to.
As the credits were rolling, the feeling of hollowness came over as I started to process what I just saw. Truly amazing to see a film have just a complete lack of worthwhile characters and having to fatten up the film with all this additional material that truly added nothing like the social media stuff of the firemen streaming their raids, the revolutionary cell trying to do something to save the people or something and just all the modifications to the overall material that go nowhere.
Lackluster to the fullest. Dull to the core. Nothing good came out of this except for Michael Shannon. I don't know what it is with the guy but he never seems to disappoint. Even when he plays a real stupid character like this because there really doesn't need to be a Fire Chief with a sense of ambivalence at what he is doing. There isn't enough of a character in the novel to deal with this dual sided nature because the character in of itself is one that has accepted wholeheartedly the idea that books needn't not survive. What a swing and a miss of a movie.
The Search for Another...
I was in despair after enduring that movie. I needed something to dull the pain of such a not so good movie. There had to be something else. The book was 72 years old and in that time someone must have gone out of their way to make an adaptation. I searched through the ancient scrolls like Gandalf did for 20 years after catching sight of that gold ring. Just like him, I was smoking some of the finest weed of the shire and in what felt like 20 years but was actually 20 minutes later back in the past before the present that I realized there was another.
I had a VHS tape. One from childhood that I never really got around to watching. As a child, I only saw a handful of VHS tapes over and over again and this one I remember vividly since when I first started watching this particular tape, I got really bored at everyone not talking so I didn't care much about finishing it. I knew the title though was Fahrenheit 451
I searched through my library of tapes but unfortunately, I did not see it. I was distraught and in being distraught over a movie I never got around to watching, I looked online to see if there was any post-VHS physical release of the film and lo and behold I found a what seems to fairly uneven quality Blu-ray for cheapie and then my eyes exploded the moment I saw this credit: Directed by Francois Truffaut
Apparently the dude had gone about in making his own adaptation back in the mid 60's and with me immediately buying the film because I knew I would forget to do so the next day from all that shire weed, I bought it and waited for delivery and it came and I saw it from the beginning to the end and so let us begin.
Flashback Chain Reaction to the First Adaptation
Immediately I was hooked. The opening montage is that of photographs showcasing those old ass analog antenna's while a narrator speaks out the credits. The film already starting off on a strong note by throwing the viewer for a loop compared to what the 2018 adaptation does which contains opening credits that look as though they belong to a television show. I digress.
The movie opens with firemen charging with their loud firetrucks, which look pretty nice in the now retro future look everyone expected the future to look like since they were all high as fuck, towards a location that is filled with books. A man in an apartment receives a phone call and immediately books it out of the house and has to go on the run for the rest of his life.
The firemen rush into the
building and start taking out every book they could find. Destroying
the place as they toss all the furniture over to find as many books
as they can and throw them out in handfuls over the balcony. All them landing into a pile like trash growing outside. Guy Montag suits up
and burns the pile of books where a group of bystanders watch in
enjoyment. This is done in relative silence which was interesting. Just this silence in their due diligence in doing their job. Like silent soldiers doing their duty without a question as to why.
As the movie goes on, it follows the novel for the most part. Guy Montag has interactions with Clarisse who is back to being a neighbor as well as his wife Linda taking up a lot of his anxiety and pain. Here though is an interesting take on the material by having one actor, Julie Christie, play both roles. An idea that a producer or so suggested that they both be two sides of the same coin and I like the way it plays out. Clarisse being the woman that can enlighten while the wife Linda is here to make sure that the standards of conformity are always met with every invention that comes to existence.
Guy Montag slowly starts to become a reader all the while Fire Chief Beatty is there on the outskirts watching. Him and this other Fireman goon that I can't remember. The two always seeming to be aware of what Montag is up to and goes about in creating a lesson for him that he will need to toe the line. That to become a reader will be something that will not matter in the end as there is nothing to gain from books. Or at least that is what they believe. For Montag though, he can't get enough of the books and this becomes this downfall.
He has a manic breakdown with his wife Linda that she sees that the only reasonable thing to do is fink on Guy and just at the point of his professional and personal lives are collapsing, the firemen all drive down to burn his house down. Guy going through the motions of finding all of his books and then being given the task of burning them. He ends up snapping and burns the fire chief and the goon then goes on the run.
The interesting part here is that he doesn't run to the resistance. There is no resistance. There are only the bookkeepers who have to wait for the time when books will be allowed then. They did do away with the whole notion of the bombs about to drop but I like this. Guy Montag running till he hits the outskirts of the city where the book-readers are. Meeting everyone that recognizes themselves as a book. Feels more natural here than in the modern adaptation.
Guy Montag is given the task of having to memorize his book so that they can burn it as no one there has a book on hand but just remembers the one book. As the movie ends, snow begins to fall and every book-keeper is walking around and reciting out loud the books they have mesmerized. No interaction with one another as they walk past each other. People alone with a book they love and put to memory. That's how I take the ending at least. It does leave room to take it another way but for this, I love it. Just absolutely fantastic.
Just a few notes of interest though that maybe only interest me. The jettison of the old man. A sort of teacher for Montag that becomes a person for him to search for near the end of the novel but his disappearance shows that his character wasn't necessarily the most needed and his absence isn't as greatly felt. The Mechancial Hound not existing is no surprise. Probably would of looked like that dog from Sleepers.
I also like the fact that the romantic element seen in the modern movie is just non existent. Clarisse and Guy are just two people wanting more for themselves and could find them in a book compared to some techno crap being sold to them. The Fire Chief works better here since they took away the tortured element that seems so important but was ultimately unimportant in the modern movie.
Overall, this just felt far more truthful with the
original material than the 2018 adaptation but also it feels less forced in the way the drama plays out. All those abundant and unnecessary changes to a novel that didn't need it. Whats there works for the most part and if you could navigate through the necessary and unnecessary then you can get a good movie as seen here.
All There Is and Shall Be
It's not much of a contest when it comes to the more interesting adaptation. Truffaut has just about everything working in his favor. The music is great because Bernard Hermann was one of the greats. The world that this society exists is far more interesting since it takes place the previously mentioned retro-future world of the 60's. Looks better overall just because everything doesn't look so goddamn dark and moody like the most recent film. It just works out better so go see it. It's pretty rad.