Farenheit 451
Categories: [ TV/Cinema ]
François Truffaut's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic S.F. novel Farenheit 451.
The story takes place in an oppressive future, where written text is banned and people spend their free time watching TV, taking part in silly TV games and taking drugs. Firemen don't put out fires anymore (since everything is fireproof), but burn books instead. One day Montag, a fireman, meets Clarisse in the monorail, a girl who looks strangely like his wife, the dullness removed. She asks him if he ever reads the books before burning them. Montag then starts stealing books when he and his crew are in action and reading them. One day, the firemen are searching the house of an old lady that contains a huge amount of books. Montag's boss describes it as one of the hidden libraries used by rebels. The firemen are prepared to burn the heap of books in the house, but the lady refuses to leave and sets herself to fire. Later, as Montag wants to visit Clarisse at her house (of the same kind as the old lady's), he sees that the doors and windows have been barred. A neighbour informs him that the police has taken the inhabitants the previous night. Montag then searches his boss's office, hoping to find where Clarisse has been taken, but discovers that she was not taken. He later meets her, hiding near her house, and he helps her enter the cellar and retrieve and destroy a list of illegal libraries. She tells him about the book-people, who live far away in the forest, away from the oppression of the city, and tells him she's leaving to join them. Later, Montag and other firemen are sent to burn books to a place which turns out to be his own home, just in time to see his wife leaving him (she was the one giving him away). Montag then fights and kills his boss, and flees. He's followed for a time by the police, but he manages to escape them (the police will afterwards kill someone at random and claim it was Montag) and rejoins the book-people in the forest.