Ray Bradbury\u2019s novel Fahrenheit 451<\/em> has been the target of several content objections over the years, most recently in 2006 in Texas<\/a>. Ironically, it\u2019s usually not because of the subject matter, but because it contains \u201cobscene language.\u201d Back in 1967, publisher Ballantine modified seventy-five passages of the book for an edition intended for high schoolers. Bradbury, a man eternally ahead of his time, has been quoted as saying, \u201cThere is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both his novel and the 1966 film adaptation directed by Francois Truffaut envision a future where this has already come to pass. Decades of enforced censorship have made books illegal contraband; those who hoard them in their homes risk arrest and having their stashes burned in public. Reading is condemned as an act of intellectual superiority: \u201cBooks disturb people,\u201d as fireman Guy Montag recites early on in the film. \u201cIt makes them antisocial.\u201d He\u2019s about to be promoted but can barely get a response out of his wife Linda, who spends most of her day in front of a \u201cwall screen,\u201d watching an interactive television show called The Family<\/em> and taking a series of uppers and downers to regulate her mood. When he meets a sweet but unusual neighbor named Clarisse, he finds himself suddenly questioning not just his work but the entire totalitarian structure of his society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That the French-born Truffaut chose a project so dedicated to the power of words for his first English language film is fascinating. It\u2019s also undeniable that his humanist instincts make him an odd fit for the dystopian material, and it\u2019s not one of his more highly regarded pictures. Still, it\u2019s instructive to watch now, if only as a lesson in how good intentions can lead to lackluster results. A detailed diary that Truffaut kept and later published called the production the \u201csaddest and most difficult\u201d of his career, largely because of intense clashes between himself and star Oskar Werner. There is something undeniably subversive in the casting of a German actor in the role of a subservient officer of the state just twenty years after the end of World War II, dressed in a black uniform with fascistic overtones, but this wasn\u2019t necessarily intentional on Truffaut\u2019s part \u2013 the two had previously worked together on Jules and Jim<\/em>. Werner\u2019s deliberately robotic performance makes a certain amount of sense in the film\u2019s early going. Where it falters is in Montag\u2019s conversion from unquestioning zealot to book-collecting fugitive. Julie Christie fares slightly better in the dual role of Linda and Clarisse, though she seems somewhat hamstrung by her scene partner\u2019s insistently stilted delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps Truffaut\u2019s first mistake was to film in color. It was his first time doing so and the bright reds and blinding beiges that bombard the screen seem at odds with the monotone nature of the society it\u2019s depicting. For a modern viewer, it\u2019s difficult to feel immersed in this unmistakably 60\u2019s vision of the future, with its monorails and modular furniture and policemen on jet packs and complete absence of anyone other than white people. Admittedly this is meant to be a society that\u2019s been systematically scrubbed of anything unseemly: there\u2019s no graffiti on the walls, no visible homeless people, no outward signs of decay. \u201cWe\u2019ve all got to be alike,\u201d the fire chief insists. \u201cOnly then can we all be happy.\u201d But aside from the ubiquity of flat-screen televisions in everyone\u2019s homes, there\u2019s little that feels immediate about the world here. To borrow a phrase from another frequently challenged author, it looks \u201cunstuck in time,\u201d which makes it easier to dismiss as reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the fact that the pacing often feels in need of a defibrillator, Truffaut\u2019s flair for the Hitchcockian does spring to life in a couple key moments. There\u2019s a scene set in a schoolhouse sure to send a chill down the spine of any educator where the camera creeps down the empty hallway as students recite times tables behind closed doors as if preparing us to confront a monster. That we find a child instead is not necessarily a relief. In public spaces Truffaut is constantly picking up on narcotized citizens touching their own bodies as if they\u2019ve become unfamiliar to them. At one point Montag forces Linda and her friends to listen as he reads aloud from a book. Truffaut lingers on their increasingly agitated faces until one of them begins sobbing. \u201cI don\u2019t like to be reminded of those feelings,\u201d she says. And then there\u2019s the climactic sequence where Montag watches his own assassination, faked by the police to appease the live home-viewing audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Truffaut doesn\u2019t seem entirely comfortable with his subject matter until the end. Having been told earlier by Clarisse of an underground society of \u201cbook people,\u201d Montag makes his escape into the countryside and finds a simplified world where the citizens chop wood, live without cars or electricity, and introduce themselves as the book they\u2019ve memorized, sharing stories and passing them down orally as the ancient Greeks once did. They are preparing, as one man puts it, for the next \u201cdark times\u201d, storing words in the one place they can\u2019t be destroyed. The film ends with snowfall, as the \u201cbook people\u201d cross paths with one another, reciting their texts in a symphony of languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a vision of the future, it\u2019s both hopeful and tenebrous. Bradbury\u2019s novel was conceived during the height of the Red Scare; the film came out as civil rights and anti-war protests were igniting across the country. Now citizens are voting<\/a> to defund their own libraries and Booker winners are being stabbed<\/a> at public readings. It seems we are constantly on the precipice of the next \u201cdark times.\u201d Whether or not we make it through depends on how willing we are to listen to one another, and what we allow ourselves to say. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Fahrenheit-451-2-1024x563.jpg\")
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