Review of Fahrenheit 451 (1966) by Marc B — 03 Nov 2011

Even with Oskar Werner's occasionally (but not always) stilted acting - it actually does help with the character not being 100% likable as a hero but rather as a robotic duntz who is somehow given some new light shone on his brain - and some dated things (i.e. the telephones) amid some VERY modern looking things like the "wall-screens" (HD TV anyone?), it's still a wonderful film, full of life and energy...

But, and don't read on if you haven't seen the film or read the book as it's a spoiler, but.... am I the only one who finds the end more than a tad disturbing? Basically, all of the dissidents who don't want to be arrested or escape or left society when they started burning books go out into the woods to create their own hidden society (or societies), away from the Dystopian blandness that has been established where no one can understand why anyone would want to be different. They go to the woods to this sort of "Book-club", where everyone has one book that they totally memorize and then they *become* that book.

I get what the message is supposed to be, a hopeful kind of "they may take our books, but they'll never take... our brains!" and that books will live on as long as people read them... but what kind of life is that, to just *be* a book? Maybe it's a given that the people who escape from such a maddeningly fucked-up and brainwashed society would still be fucked up anyway. That's what is disturbing to me, that the people who escape because everyone is the same would STILL be the same, just with different book topics. Who would these people actually *be*? Just walking talking symbols? Maybe they talk of other things, but it didn't seem that way - it looked more like out of scenes from Godard's Week End where characters drift in and out from literary classics.

But... I have to think Truffaut, who was a brilliant mind and usually brilliant filmmaker, knew this as well, and there's some fun to be had even with this - i.e. identical twins "become" Pride and Prejudice part 1 and part II respectively - and yet I don't know if I see it as being very uplifting. On the contrary it's a very dark ending to me, one where there's little hope for the "good" guys, and that the books will still be burned anyway, and that the best that can be hoped for is that people who end up dying pass on the, uh, whole memorized book to someone else. And as my wife pointed out to me, it would be really damn hard to memorize an entire book to memory. What if one forgets? Are all the memories that sharp? And what if they use their own words? Maybe THAT would be the start of a new society, a new kind of literature, or rather "post-modern" or some shit...

And yeah, really well made film, even with the moments where Werner is less than great (though he's surprisingly good too in some small ways, physically he makes the part work excellently, how he responds to things like the woman who burns herself with the books), and I LOVED the editing here, and Roeg's cinematography is some of his best work of his career.