In a dystopian
world where books are illegal, a lead book burning enforcement officer starts
to question why he does what he does.
Let's talk about dystopias for a minute. As always, I'm going to really focus on movies, but I'll be dipping my toes into book discussion as well. I've considered myself a fan of dystopias for many years. I read several of them, mostly in college. I've seen plenty of dystopian movies. I like the thought experiment of them: If <hypothetical situation>, then what would that look like? They are a simple way to give a concrete interpretation of an abstract idea. However, the more I think about it, dystopias are a dead end. They can only go so far. They are training wheels for critical thinking.
This shouldn't be a shocking revelation. The latest wave of dystopias have almost all been from Young Adult series. A lot of the classics are high school or college staples. That's because they are simple ways to get into discussions about larger ideas. Divergent is a warning about sorting people by basic traits. The Hunger Games uses games to distract the masses from the unfair class imbalances. Fahrenheit 451 is about controlling thought by limiting access to it. That's where dystopias can run into problems. After they make their point, what else is left? Dystopia's are remembered for their first act more often than not. That's due to an inherent problem: it's hard to build a world to prove a point.
It hard to build any new world. There's a lot of history to think through and a lot of cause and effect to consider. Dystopias have the added difficulty of starting with the end result in mind. Middle Earth is just a world that J.R.R. Tolkien created. Bilbo can have a ring in it in one story, then that ring can be the ultimate evil in another. He can make it up as he goes along and change the world as needed. Something like Divergent starts with the idea of sorting people a certain way then has to reverse engineer how that could work. The answer almost always leads back to "it just does" at some point. This kind of plot-driven thinking comes at the expense of the characters. And that's where things start falling apart for me.
I haven't read Fahrenheit 451. I only know the basics of it. Immediately however, I realize that it can't be properly adapted and updated without abandoning virtually the entire premise. Think about the last 10 things (not just books) you read. How many of them didn't involve a screen? In the 1950s, there wasn't the internet or Kindles to consider. Now, the idea of making ink and paper books the enemy is pretty quaint. The idea is more symbolic now, but the film treats books like they are a present danger to the society. I get that the government probably controls the internet too. I suppose that's assumed if not outright stated in the film. Where it gets silly for me is the idea that different people have to memorize books. There's a simpler and more reliable solution. It's called a thumb drive. There's no need to code all this into bird DNA or whatever (I lost interest in the explanation about what exactly the OMNIS was). Thumb drives take up very little physical space, can be hidden literally anywhere, and can hold a shit ton (approximately) of books on them. I really try not to rewrite a movie as I'm watching it, but the threat in this movie felt really hollow.
Michael B. Jordan is good in a very difficult role. Guy Montag is a tough character. One of the main questions I ask when watching a movie is if a character could exist off the screen. Can I believe the the character that I'm seeing could've gotten to that point with those characteristics before the movie began? In the case of Guy, I don't believe it for a second. He's smart and curious from the very beginning. His job, which he's risen in the ranks of quickly, requires him to be an unquestioning zealot. That doesn't appear to be his nature and I wasn't convinced by his moment(s) of discovery that led to his shift. It was too easy. The Guy who would be swayed this easily wouldn't look like the Guy the film introduces us too in the beginning. Without someone as good and engaging as Michael B. Jordan in the role, he wouldn't work at all.
Michael Shannon is a bit easier to buy into. Captain Beatty is a true believer. He knows about what the books contain and rejects them. There is no wool over his eyes. He understands books and thinks they are a problem. Granted, Shannon doesn't have to go through any change in the movie, so it's a much easier part than Jordan's. Sofia Boutella is fine. She's there to explain a bunch of stuff. There are better uses for her, but there's worse ones too.
The movie looks good for an HBO movie. It's a glossier Black Mirror kind of world. I like the scope and the ambition of the movie. This is certainly better than all their biopics about complicated men (and occasionally women). I respect the idea of updating the source material, but I simply don't think it can be done. Not like this.
Oh. I didn't know where else to put this. When I mentally check out of a movie as quickly as I did with this, that leaves me way to much time to get fixated on plot inconsistencies. One that drove me insane was how conveniently famous Guy was. At times, he's the face of the government. At other times, he's riding on a train and no one seems to notice him. For a society as strictly monitored as this, he sure seems to move around unnoticed with ease.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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