Rage against the Machine: Technology and it's Discontents
ATHENS Intensive Course UPM59
Fahrenheit 451
by Andreas Demler
This movie review is the final contribution to the course UPM59 I
attended to at this years november session of the european
exchange program ATHENS in Madrid. This philosophy and science-fiction-movie based seminar on
technology and it's discontent held by Salvador Rodríguez Nuero
intended to provide information highlighting the relation between
science, technology and society: For this purpose, we analysed the
way Science-Fiction films represent, show or mirror hopes and fears,
desires and anxieties of contemporary society. Special attention was
paid not only to plot analysis (or narration), but to the visual and
aural strategies which reinforce plot or undermine it.
I chose Francois Truffaut's film 'Fahrenheit 451' from 1966,
because i`ve read the novel it's based on some years ago in school.
The distopic story written by Ray Bradbury in 1953 coinceded with
many of the courses' topics, so i considered it as very suitable.
Watching Truffaut's adaption of Fahrenheit 451 as rather free interpreted but excellent piece of art I unfortunatelly found some noticable differences,
especially concerning the technical science-fiction part, but
nevertheless this version is quite adequate to be analized on this
occasion.
Plot
In a future dystopian society, all printed materials have been
banned. A totalitarian government employs a force known as Firemen to
seek out and burn all literature, permitting them to search anyone,
anywhere, at any time.
"Fahrenheit 451" is supposed to be the temperature at
which book paper catches fire, as the protagonist Guy Montag (Oskar
Werner) explains in a scene at the beginning. Montag is a senior and
respected Fireman who seems happy enough with his life until he is
approached by a young woman named Clarisse (Julie Christie) on his
way home from work one day. She starts up a conversation with him,
and the two become friendly. She bewilders him but challenges him to
think and feel ... and read. When he arrives home he finds his wife
(also played by Julie Christie) sedated and watching
the wallscreen (interactive TV of sorts).
As his doubts and his friendship with Clarisse grow, he starts to
secretly take home, hoard, and read some of the books he finds in the
course of his daily work, and as he reads, he becomes obsessed with
the books. They become his mistress, and are what finally make him
feel affection and warmth.
At the house of a book collector, the captain (Cyril Cusack) talks
with Montag at length about how books change people and make them
want to be better than others, which is considered anti-social.
The
book collector, a middle-aged woman rather preferes to burn herself
and the house so she can die with her books. That night, Montag dreams of Clarisse as the book collector who
killed herself. That same night,Clarisse's house is raided, but she
escapes through a trapdoor in the roof thanks to her uncle. Montag
breaks into the captain's office looking for information about the
missing Clarisse, and is caught, but not punished.
Montag meets with Clarisse and helps her break back into her house
to destroy papers that would bring the Firemen to others like her.
She tells him of the "book people," a hidden sect of people
who flout the law, each of whom have memorized a single book to keep
it alive.
Later, Montag tells the captain he is resigning, but is convinced
to go on one more call, which turns out to be Montag's own
house. Linda leaves the house, telling Montag that she couldn't live
with his book obsession anymore and leaves him to be punished by the
Firemen. Angrily, he firstly destroys the bedroom and television
before setting fire to the books. The captain lectures him about the
books, and pulls a last book from Montag's coat, for which Montag
kills him.
He escapes and finds the book people, where he views his
"capture" on television, staged to keep the masses calm.
Eventually Montag selects a book to memorize and becomes one of them.
During the seminar we mostly focused on the 'dark side' of
technology, the thereby provoked anxieties and the transition of
topics and portrayal through the ages. Our investigation started at
the natal hour of science-fictive movie-making with Metropolis
(1927), followed by 2001:
A Space odysse (1968), THX 1138 (1971) and Blade
Runner (1982) and finally led to The Matrix (1999)
representing contemporary discourses. We learnt about analyzing-tools
to highlight stylistic devices which emphasize the directors subtext,
therefor we examined on narrative instruments such as colours,
symbols, cinematography, characters and the manner of conciously
dropping or tranferring information to raise questions.
Truffaud not being a typical science-fiction movie director made this
masterpiece of motion-picture special, thus he illustrates in a
different manner. Compared to Ray Bradburys more sociocritical, allegorical sinister novel
Truffaut spares out varios technical aspects, it's seems that he
dosen't even try to create a high-tech future ambient incorporating
complex special effects even by standards of 1966 - he rather employs
symbology and allusions on a more personal scope.
Depiction
of Regime and Technology
Both, Bradbury and Truffaut refrain to tell something neither about the previous events which led to this kind of dystopic regime nor what time the story is dated at. The only occasion the film refers to a former time is when Clarisse asks Montag if it is "true, that a long time ago firemen used to put out fires and not burn books".
My impression concerning technological innovations were divergent. Inventions seem to be made such as overhead tracks, interacive television or spotting drones but nevertheless many processes still depend on obsolete technologies like ancient phones and grammophone loudspeakers.
As Montag manages to flee from the city and to hide him from the man-controlled flying drones, he arrives at the bookpeople's, see himself being persecuted and shot dead by a helicopters in television. "The show must go on" says on of the booksman.
The omnipresent regime typified by the almight fire department manifests it's funcuality through the denounciation letterbox where anyone is free to put names of putative book collector. That reminded me of the fear-driven control system the german Stasi used to created subtle and ongoing internal opression.
The novel played on the concerns of the time when it was written.
Censorship and suppression of thought, mainly through intimidation,
was being exercised in the United States. The intimidation was being
done by radio and newspaper columnists, who supported Senator Joe
McCarthy. The book burnings by Nazis - so called autodafés - which started in Germany in
1933 and continued until the end of World War II, were still in
living memory. "It killed my heart and killed my soul and the memory of Hitler burning the books caused me to sit down an write Fahrenheit 451" Bradbury stated at the age of 15.
"Books are forbidden because they make people unhappy, they disturb them and make them anti-social. Its just a matter of
fashion. Happy by making people equal." Bradbury even dares to put books and man on the same level, the man chooses a title, becomes it and even names himself after it. In Fahrenheit 451 literature symbolizes even more: it's the spirit of the writer, freedom, feeling, self-reflection and the unfolding of one's emotional life. This allutes obviously and unambigously to Hitler and the burning of books and humans.
The absence of civil courage respective the lack of social participation
due to drugsedation and brainwashing is a absolutly actual topic.
To keep the people abulic and obedient, the regime prescribes - like in 'THX 1138' - large amounts of unspecified medication for every kind of sickness. Linda doesn't even remenber that she had passed out and Montag saved her live by calling the ambulance (two suspiciuos 'doctors' showed up and pumped her stomach).
Another parallel to 'THX 1138' comes to my mind by the change of Montags mentality. By digesting the essence of books Montag can't maintaining this pointless "happiness" and notices that his fellows are emotionless human being, almost like machines ('Blade Runner'). So he needs to break out of the society an go forth to find out what's reality an verity.
As a side effect of a
technological society wherein people are discouraged from interacting
and thinking Truffaut
suggests sensual narcissism as a kind of side-effect. Throughout the film, people are glimpsed
absent-mindedly stroking, kissing, or caressing themselves. Certainly
the current mania for self-involved social media, explicit self-pics,
and Internet over-sharing can be seen as the ultimate real-life
actualization of Truffaut's hinted-at phenomenon of self-absorption.
Cinematigraphy
and stylistic devices
Truffaud not being a typical
science-fiction movie director made this masterpiece of
motion-picture special, thus he illustrates in a different manner.
Colour:
It was also the first
colour film directed by Truffaut. Although he by all accounts was not
happy about making a color film and found it a bit unsettling, color
is used to great effect here;
sparingly, except for the extreme shade of red that is seen
throughout which embodies the omnipresent regime.
Incidental
music:
Truffaut decided for soundtrack mastermind Bernard Herrmann to be the composer. For Fahrenheit 451s'
dehumanized vision Herrmanns composed eclectic music with a maximum
of human orchestration and even added harp, carillon and different
types of xylophones.
His
music dares the balancing act between familiarity and discontent,
between comfort and coolness and above all between benevolence and
systematization. It also demonstrates, that oppression and terror are
cut from the same cloth as goodness.
Truffaut, however, contributed much to the uniqueness of the film
as a work of art separate from the book. From the opening credits,
which were spoken and not displayed on the screen, to the ending, in
which the exiles who have devoted their lives to memorizing books
recite their books while walking blissfully in the snow, Truffaut's
genius is there.
By the time the film appeared, America was more
concerned with race riots. So, burning was a viscerally powerful
theme. Lost on most viewers in 1966 was the detail that among the
burned books was the film journal Cahiers du Cinema for which
Truffaut wrote, and that on the magazine's cover was a picture from
the film Breathless, written by Truffaut. Also among the burned
books: The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, both written by
Bradbury.
Books shown or mentioned in the movie: Don Quixote - Othello, the Moor
of Venice - Vanity Fair - Madame Bovary - Le monde a coté - Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass - Gaspard
Hauser - Robinson Crusoe - The World of Salvador Dali - Jeanne d'Arc -
Life and Loves - The Weather - My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin - Les
negres - Confessions of an Irish Rebel - The Ginger Man - Petrouchka -
The Catcher In The Rye - The Moon and Sixpence - Lolita - David
Copperfield - Mein Kampf - She Might Have Been Queen - Social Aspects of
Disease - The Ethics of Aristotle - The Brothers Karamazov - The
Sorrows of Young Werther - The Martian Chronicles - Plato's Republic -
Fahrenheit 451 - Pride and Prejudice - Gone with the Wind - Animal Farm -
No Orchids for Miss Blandish - Jane Eyre - Moby Dick - The Picture of
Dorian Gray - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - The Trial.
In celebration of Bradbury's 90th anniversary Tim Hamilton published a comic adaption of Fahrenheit 451 in 2009.
