Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Second viewing; first seen on March 3, 1987.

In a society where books have been banned and houses are fireproof, the firemen's job is to find and burn books. One of them begins to question his work.

As a serious tale about a political dystopia, this movie is wrong on so many levels that the task of analyzing it is simply senseless. Suffice it to quote IMDB user reviewer Theo Robertson on perhaps its most basic assault on reason:

[begin quote]
A society where books are banned ! It's not a fantasy . Consider the likes of Nazi Germany , Stalin's Russia , Mao's China etc , but the flaw with FAHRENHEIT 451 lies in the idea that not certain books are banned but ALL books are banned . Think about that for a moment then ask yourself this question : How would a society be able to function under this law ? We're shown schools still exist but how do pupils learn without being able to read text , and if people can not read text then how will they be able to write ? It seems impossible that a society would still be able to function without books
[end quote]

As an absurdist comedy, on the other hand, it is not bad. Not having read the novel, I can only assume it was written (in the early 50s) as a kind of resentful apocalyptic rant against television by someone who took it upon himself to be the spokesman for the supposedly moribund class of fiction writers (even though he makes all class of books the victims of this fictitious law). I note also that the movie uses what is called a "straw man argument" in rhetoric: you take an obviously bad deed and condemn it energetically, thereby reviling the one whom you accused of that deed, in this case an authoritarian government. As a consequence, all authoritarian governments are now seen in a bad light, even though most of them would never do such a thing in the real world.

Rating: 51 (up from 37)