Movie Review - Bibliophiles' Nightmare, Fahrenheit 451

(Montag and Clarisse, two fictional characters, in Truffaut's movie adaptation of Fahrenheit 451)

It does not seem like a bad life, a pretty, happy, stay at home wife, lots of mood enhancers, wall sized flat screen tv and a daytime job as a firethrower. What's more, Montag is just about to be promoted. He had been doing splendid job burning books, his superior tells him. At least one man in the firemens brigade seems envious and we see him glaring Montag spitefully. Not much to worry about there,success always bring enemies. Still, Montag suffers for something more in life. He is melancholy and looks stubborn.

I haven't read the book but I saw the film a week or so ago. I must admit, that is the best dystopia I have seen so far. From the look of things, sweet life seems to be running along in a sunny neighborhood just fine. The only thing the seems to be the problem is the tasteless t.v. programming that leaves very little room for imagination, or a whole lot, depending on which way you look at it.

Enter the resistance in the the form of beautiful Clarisse. She is hip, she is beautiful and you know as soon as you see her that she reads books. She has the same face as Montag's wife but she is a subversive schoolteacher, very subversive it turns out.

"Have you ever read any of the book you burn?" Clarisse asks him with a rising inflexion. What a nice English girl! Montag thinks. As you see him walking home along a nice patch of English countryside, you know that love is in the air.

So she rescues him and they live happily ever after with the "bookpeople", the revolutionaries who have memorized at least one book and keep literature alive through the dark days of totalitarian lifestyles (we never see ANYONE having a drink once). Montag, our hero, through his own free choice, is in the process of becoming one of Poe's terrifying stories. Mr. Poe, always a sign of good taste.

Judging from the futuristic stories, and probably because the conservatives would have eventually won, sex is not going to be as fun in the future. For some reason, sex in the future world always seems on the wrong side of society. Also, there must be a reason why girls are better suited to understand the world than the boys. All three memorable dystopias that I know of, Orwell's 1984, Terry Gillian's Brazil, or F-451, have pretty pretty, pretty sexy girls, who, in one magic spell, shatter the matrix and voila! our heroes are as Englightened as only an English gentleman can be.

Thank you girls. We appreciate the spirit and the passion with which you are saving us from the world.

- by saatdobato