D | A fireman entrusted with burning the nation's books has a crisis of conscience. Directed by Ramin Bahrani Starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shanon Initial Review by Jon Kissel |
HBO’s original programming, consisting of series, movies, and miniseries, have a clear laggard in that trio. The movies don’t have anywhere near the cultural persistence that either series or miniseries have, despite HBO’s considerable marketing and development prowess. The standard format for feature-length films are adaptations of real events, and the strictures of sticking to history don’t let the actors do much more than impressions of well-known figures while the directing is utilitarian A-to-B event tracking. These are sometimes great, like the you-are-there history of Path to War or Conspiracy of the early-aughts, but have lately been Al Pacino in a series of bizarre wigs or make-up as he trolls for Emmy awards by playing disgraced public figures. Literary adaptations are more comfortable in the miniseries category (Empire Falls, Olive Kitteridge), and after reading the Wikipedia plot description of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, that may have been the better route. Ramin Bahrani attempts to cram a lot of plot and character motivation into 100 minutes, and ends up exchanging believable arcs and actions for ostentatious camera movement and bludgeoning political satire. If this is the art that survives the Second Civil War, we’re in trouble.
Bahrani and co-writer Amir Naderi keep the basic plot of Bradbury’s book in that both take place in a dystopia where books are illegal and are actively sought out and destroyed by repurposed fire brigades in pursuit of societal harmony. A participant becomes a resister, and so on. The biggest departure from the book seems to be the elevation of up-and-coming fireman Guy Montag (Michael B. Jordan) and his captain John Beatty (Michael Shannon) at the expense of Montag’s wife, who doesn’t exist in the movie. The script adds some paternal motivations here for Montag and Beatty, such that it’s clearly supposed to be a key emotional crux of the film. One doesn’t cast Michael Shannon, however, if one is trying to convey a kind of warm rapport with another actor. Bahrani previously worked with Shannon in 99 Homes, another film in which he took a younger man under his wing in an ethically-questionable endeavor, but that was a Faustian dynamic. In Fahrenheit 451, the actors are going for playful in some scenes and admiring in others and I do not think any of it works. This failure robs the film of much of any punch as Montag and Beatty start to separate from each other.
Jordan is better-cast as Montag, but Bahrani also hampers him with too much distance on his arc. He goes from the most enthusiastic of firemen to the man who sacrifices himself to brings art back into the world. Why couldn’t he already have been disillusioned when the film started, shortening the distance he has to go? Instead, the film struggles both in communicating how or why he’s particularly good at his job, or in how the cracks start to form in his psyche. He is boldly and forcefully asserting the destructive force of the Eels, verbally dehumanizing them and gleefully casting them out of society, and then he’s suddenly moved by one’s death and taking the unchallenged word of not only an Eel, but an Eel who squeals on other Eels. He has apparently been keeping artifacts in his air ducts, but that person is so much more believable as someone further down the ladder instead of a city-wide hero. Maybe his position was elevated to get him closer to Beatty, but as previously stated, their rapport is ineffective. One of my favorite tropes in cinema is ‘person wakes up to the lies they’ve been told,’ and Montag should have several of those kinds of epiphanies. They’re included as mere events that need to happen by Bahrani instead of transcendent moments for Montag.
Bahrani, Naderi, and DP Kramer Morgenthau are being actively annoying in other spots. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s fish-eye lenses, and Fahrenheit 451 has a whole bunch of them. All that’s needed is the early one, representing the view of the Alexa-equivalents that are everywhere, but they keep showing up, including when the fire truck is racing to a raid. Despite the constant surveillance, there isn’t that feeling of inevitability that should accompany it. Instead, characters get away with things they shouldn’t, and then get found out thanks to old fashioned stake-outs. The whiff that is the surveillance theme goes along with the strike that is the portent and self-seriousness in so many shots. Look at the roiling waves on Montag’s wall while he thinks about his role in the world. Gross. The camera tricks and blatant imagery are strangling the film, and this is compounded by the ham-fisted use of current buzzwords or phrases that rip the viewer out of the experience. Avatar insisted on having a character say the soldiers were ‘going to fight terror with terror’ and that was a film with a full-on bad script. Fahrenheit 451 does the same when it says anything close to fake news or job-takers. Unique times call for unique satire, and this film ain’t it.
The aforementioned Wikipedia summary reads extremely ahead of its time for a book published in 1953. There’s plenty to work with for a contemporary adaptation, from the narcotization of the citizenry with inane media to the gleeful surrendering of privacy to technological firms and the encroaching idiocracy coupled with my favorite word of the Trump era, kakistocracy (government of the worst). Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t stretch towards any of these outcomes, squandering its strong premise in favor of half-baked character dynamics and on-the-nose references. D+
Jordan is better-cast as Montag, but Bahrani also hampers him with too much distance on his arc. He goes from the most enthusiastic of firemen to the man who sacrifices himself to brings art back into the world. Why couldn’t he already have been disillusioned when the film started, shortening the distance he has to go? Instead, the film struggles both in communicating how or why he’s particularly good at his job, or in how the cracks start to form in his psyche. He is boldly and forcefully asserting the destructive force of the Eels, verbally dehumanizing them and gleefully casting them out of society, and then he’s suddenly moved by one’s death and taking the unchallenged word of not only an Eel, but an Eel who squeals on other Eels. He has apparently been keeping artifacts in his air ducts, but that person is so much more believable as someone further down the ladder instead of a city-wide hero. Maybe his position was elevated to get him closer to Beatty, but as previously stated, their rapport is ineffective. One of my favorite tropes in cinema is ‘person wakes up to the lies they’ve been told,’ and Montag should have several of those kinds of epiphanies. They’re included as mere events that need to happen by Bahrani instead of transcendent moments for Montag.
Bahrani, Naderi, and DP Kramer Morgenthau are being actively annoying in other spots. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s fish-eye lenses, and Fahrenheit 451 has a whole bunch of them. All that’s needed is the early one, representing the view of the Alexa-equivalents that are everywhere, but they keep showing up, including when the fire truck is racing to a raid. Despite the constant surveillance, there isn’t that feeling of inevitability that should accompany it. Instead, characters get away with things they shouldn’t, and then get found out thanks to old fashioned stake-outs. The whiff that is the surveillance theme goes along with the strike that is the portent and self-seriousness in so many shots. Look at the roiling waves on Montag’s wall while he thinks about his role in the world. Gross. The camera tricks and blatant imagery are strangling the film, and this is compounded by the ham-fisted use of current buzzwords or phrases that rip the viewer out of the experience. Avatar insisted on having a character say the soldiers were ‘going to fight terror with terror’ and that was a film with a full-on bad script. Fahrenheit 451 does the same when it says anything close to fake news or job-takers. Unique times call for unique satire, and this film ain’t it.
The aforementioned Wikipedia summary reads extremely ahead of its time for a book published in 1953. There’s plenty to work with for a contemporary adaptation, from the narcotization of the citizenry with inane media to the gleeful surrendering of privacy to technological firms and the encroaching idiocracy coupled with my favorite word of the Trump era, kakistocracy (government of the worst). Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t stretch towards any of these outcomes, squandering its strong premise in favor of half-baked character dynamics and on-the-nose references. D+
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