‘451’ a modern read on Bradbury classic
With high-tech touches, cautionary tale is more like clumsy critique
The near-future America in HBO’s “Fahrenheit 451” is illuminated by fire and emoji.
Sunlight seems to be a distant memory, and so is the resistance. The masses cheer — and send happy faces floating up video screens on the sides of skyscrapers — as the last few citizens who cherish independent thought are rounded up and their books are torched by flamethrowers.
The adaptation uses the framework of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 book about government suppression of free thought; his novel was influenced by Nazi book burnings and censorship in the McCarthy era. Writer-director Ramin Bahrani adds modern touches to the tight 100-minute drama, including operating systems that spy for the government, social media mob mentality, and antiintellectualism as a government institution.
But each change seems to pull the narrative further from Bradbury’s
cautionary satire, and toward a more blunt and clumsy criticism of the #FakeNews era. “Fahrenheit 451” rarely feels imminent, even as it aims for a modern truth.
Thankfully, the movie is always watchable. It’s leaner than Francois Truffaut’s 1966 film version with Julie Christie, and even less faithful to the source material. And yet pains are taken to honor the spirit of both the novel and Truffaut’s adaptation, even as plot accommodations are made for 21st century technology. The casting of Michael B. Jordan (“Black Panther”) and Michael Shannon (“Shape of Water”) — two actors who have risen to new heights in the past six months — adds to the movie-ofthe-moment feel.
Jordan is Guy Montag, a rising star “fireman” who acts as judge, jury and human torch, finding citizens who are hiding forbidden literature, and making them examples on the Nine, a new government-run internet that seems to operate on old Facebook code. He’s mentored by Captain Beatty (Shannon), a ruthlessly violent local leader on the rise.
The discovery of a massive paper library, and an act of martyrdom by a book-protecting “eel,” sparks sympathetic memories. Montag is further challenged by a resistance informant (Sofia Boutella) dealing with her own internal struggle.
Jordan uses his established talent for portraying men of intelligence struggling with more rage-filled instincts, which were conquered in “Creed” and caused his character’s rise and fall in “Black Panther.” An early scene in a classroom, with spongelike students gleefully soaking in misinformation, is particularly stirring. As children recite government lies in a classroom (“Why do we burn? For happiness!”), Montag seems awakened a little more by each word.
While Jordan plays with subtleties, Shannon gets another satisfying super-villain turn. The limitless possibilities of cruelty are visible in his eyes, as he speaks untruths with unshakable confidence, delivering each line as if it’s a dramatic reading of one of President Trump’s tweets.
“Thousands of words?” Beatty shouts at an old man watching a video about investigative journalism, which is outlawed in the movie’s world. “In your pathetic time, were people happy? There were so many millions of opinions that our country slid into the second civil war!”
After a while, though, the new ideas dry out, and even Shannon’s terrifying rants (“Do you know what’s inside these books? Insanity!”) border on camp. As the narrative strays further from Bradbury’s book, with a romance and a possible digital cure-all from the resistance called “OMNIS,” the movie begins to fall apart. The ideas and eerie discussions that proliferated early in “Fahrenheit 451” are minimized, and most of the second half of the movie is spent checking boxes in a standard race against time, with everything at stake, and no doubt where the story is leading.
It’s a surprise coming from Bahrani, whose feature films “Chop Shop” and “99 Homes” were anything but procedural. The filmmaker has no problem writing electric dialogue in the new “Fahrenheit,” and the visuals are filled with understated detail, with the firemen living in plush homes turned cold by weak fluorescent lighting, and the ghettos of the book-loving eels warmed as if by candlelight.
And yet Bahrani never grasps a convincing dystopian future. The broader look of the world is an afterthought, seemingly cribbed from other projects. Views of the city at night, with huge billboards and spewing plumes of fire, could be a “Blade Runner” test reel.
Production designer Mark Digby (“Ex Machina,” “Slumdog Millionaire”) and his crew have much better luck in the movie’s close-ups. A Blockbuster Video tape with a “Be Kind, Please Rewind” sticker passes the screen for a moment, now a valuable piece of contraband. There’s a temptation to press pause every time a written page appears on the screen, to see the book title and which passage was chosen.
“Fahrenheit 451” has its highs and lows. But you will walk away wanting to read a physical book, and maybe embrace it for a few moments beforehand.