Fahrenheit 451

It's been a very long time -- decades, I'd reckon -- since I've read Fahrenheit 451. All I really remembered of it was "It was a pleasure to burn" and a general overall view of Guy Montag's arc towards rejecting the state's maniuplation of the people through media and censorship. So I'm not going to compare this to the movie point by point to the book. But I know enough about the book to know that, on a fundamental level, this movie fails to capture its themes. I will commend the movie for modernizing certain aspects of the story; The 9, the omnipresent media outlet that is in every home, has been changed from a television network to an always-on livestream, where people are encouraged to respond with three-word posts and emojis. It helps underscore how language and expression have been manipulated and simplified to the point of near irrelevance. There are Siri-like, voice-activated home computer systems that are never fully turned off. The movie is trying to take what Ray Bradbury envisioned when the book was written some 70 or so years ago and infuse it with the changes made to society and technology since then. And I must give props to Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon for their excellent work. The script they're handed isn't the best, but they are both great actors and neither give less than all they have to the roles. It's also, visually speaking, a good movie to look at; the interiors of homes, the cityscapes, the slums, all of it is well done. The futuristic touches are there to remind you this isn't our world or our time, but so much of it looks like our world to give it a familiar feeling. This easily could be our world in a few decades. Unfortunately, it's the themes this movie can't seem to grasp or express that bring it down to just okay. There are throwaway lines about how books started to be banned because they offended someone (Huck Finn because of the companion Jim's offensive nickname, for instance), and mentions of how the internet let too many people have too many opinions and that made everybody miserable, so the only way to fix it all was to destroy it all. The idea that Instagram and The Catcher In The Rye and a VHS copy of Bad Boys II led to the Second American Civil War feels a little glib, especially when it's said in what amounts to a quick exposition dump for the viewer's benefit. More than that, though, the movie doesn't take the time to explore this new world, the politics that built it, or the resistance against it. The themes of censorship and media manipulation are one thing, and that's only given just enough justification for it to be a plot point. But Guy Montag's entire character arc -- changing from aspiring fireman captain to freedom fighter -- seems to depend on him staring off into the middle distance on occasion. WHY is his resolve weakening? What do his memories of his father have to do with it? Why does the captain write down philosophical thoughts and always seem on the brink of fighting against the system? Why is someone having access to Anna Karenina or a Screaming Trees album going to give them heretical, disruptive thoughts? This is never explored. We're told that anything that isn't the 9 is bad in this world, and somehow, books will save us all. I'm all for reading and individual thought and ignoring the media as much as possible, but boiling it down to "the internet is bad, books will save us" is stupid and illogical. The characters are equally dumb; nobody feels like they have any agency. The plot needs Guy to start doubting? He starts doubting, with a motivation no stronger than "because the second act is coming". The movie is watchable, and if all you want is a surface-skimming of the story, some cool visuals, and a couple of really good actors, you can find a lot worse ways to spend an hour forty. But when you have a story like Fahrenheit 451 that only gets more insightful with age, and it's stripped of all its nuance and philosophy ... it kind of becomes the mindless, distracting drivel the story is trying to warn us against.