In the cold winter, what do humans desire most? It is fire, which brings warmth, transmits light, and dispels darkness.
The movie starts with fire and ends with fire. Different from the author Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name, the film story breaks away from the environment full of metaphor and satire, deliberately inactivating contradictions, using stage effects and dramatization to reshape people’s consciousness collisions, transforming the original works Sharp criticism is gently reduced to humanistic thinking and silent resistance.
Whether it's Plato's "Utopia", Thomas More's Utopia, or Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring, they are all built in an ethereal place where everyone is equal and there is no fight for shared resources. In our consciousness, equality is often equated with the same. The "fire captain" in the play adheres to this idea and follows this principle to command the "fire station" (book burning station).
They built a "perfect" social system around theory: eliminating the disputes caused by differences in thinking, and "placing" everyone in a low-educated pan-entertainment atmosphere. Everyone is literate but does not read books. Allow them to maintain daily communication, and spend more time at work, watching TV variety shows, taking drugs to absorb spiritual joy. Arguments and wars are avoided, and the whole system is peaceful.
Logically, people with the same thinking tend to make similar decisions, and only maintain a unified pace in their development. When people have different ideas, they will derive different ideas. When a unified opinion is needed, it is inevitable that there will be a similar rule that a power-setter or a minority obey the majority. This is contrary to complete equality and respect for personal will.
In order to satisfy personal expression, it is depicted in the movie that when the protagonist’s wife is watching TV entertainment at home, he will be invited to participate in the interactive part of the TV program, and make judgments in front of the screen to determine the plot direction. This is surprisingly similar to the interactive British drama "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" launched not long ago. However, in several Q&A sessions, anyone with a discerning eye can see that the so-called interactive plot is basically arranged in advance and will not affect the development of the plot. Only the protagonist’s wife was immersed in it, and she was complacent and did not agree that she could answer all the questions.
The director Truffau deliberately hides many social backgrounds and fragments them. Many related scenes are often glimpses. Putting it together will restore a weird world. Everyone will always touch their bodies (cheeks, calves) unconsciously, including the male protagonist's wife standing in front of the mirror and constantly touching her breasts, behaving strangely, showing some kind of syndrome, like collective hysteria. The reason behind this is not expressed in the play. As a normal person, the male protagonist seems out of place, but the male protagonist is the core maintainer of the entire system (the book burning guarantees the perfect operation of the system). Such a separation of positions will inevitably lead to a break in thought, and resistance is inevitable (behind the scenes). The metaphor is self-evident).
However, the film did not move towards intensified contradictions. It appeared similar to the magnificent scenes and fierce torture in "V for Vendetta", but dig deeper into the protagonist's heart, from a book burner to a book thief. The protagonist begins to secretly collect books at home, break away from the boring entertainment, and plunge into the embrace of reading. Instinct is indispensable. Humans have a thirst for knowledge flowing in their blood from beginning to end. Books are undoubtedly the best dessert. This kind of plot trend also conforms to that it is a dystopian story, using utopian fantasy means to refute utopia, exposing its unrealization one by one, and the implication is far greater than the content.
There is a section in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow": ice and snow fall, and the protagonist’s son Sam and his friends are trapped in the library. They are forced to burn books to protect themselves. In the process, they discussed what books to burn, and finally chose the National Tax Code to burn. We know that books are an important tool that accompanies human development. They acted as knowledge carriers in the early days, and at the same time assumed the two pillars of dissemination and inheritance. It is not an exaggeration to regard books as a symbol of human civilization. Therefore, when the social order encounters a collapsed destruction, Sam and the others consider saving the fire of civilization for future generations. Starting from the books at the end of the social order, it is a kind of humanity. consider.
In this movie, we actually encountered such a crisis decision. To ensure the normal operation of the system, all the books that create fantastic ideas must be burned, and they must be used as the driving force for the giants to advance. Therefore, the author arranged a group of "Bookmen" with strong humanism to preserve the memory of civilization. They wrote down the books completely, waiting for the "cold winter" to pass, and when the day of recovery comes, sowing the fire of civilization again.
Back to the movie title: What does 451 degrees Fahrenheit represent? The human body temperature is 37 degrees Celsius, and the normal temperature of water is 4 degrees Celsius. Fahrenheit 451 degrees is the temperature at which books and papers burn. Everything has a temperature, so what is the temperature of our civilization?
At the end of the story, there was heavy snowfall, dozens of people paced back and forth by the lake, chanting words, and reciting the contents of a certain book. Old things die in the fire, and new things will be born in the flames of our hearts. The movie echoes back and forth like this, shouting silently.
This 1966 work still looks forward-looking today. A report pointed out that last year, the average reading volume of paper books per adult in China was only 4.67, and the average reading volume of e-books per adult was 3.32, which is far lower than the reading volume of other countries.
More often, we are more willing to discuss what TV series we watched at the table in the elevator, where to go on weekends, and what daily necessities and skin care products we bought. The bridge segment in the movie was staged again after 60 years. It is undeniable that the diversity of mass entertainment brings a lot of joy, but it also destroys our spiritual world, allowing us to gradually move towards the abyss of emptiness. Maybe one day we will hate reading and let the firefighters raise their spray guns.
This time it was not water but a flame of destruction.
View more about Fahrenheit 451 reviews
