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A review by feedingbrett
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3.0
With my experience with Fahrenheit 451's plot already pre-established through Francois Truffaut's adaptation of the novel, I came into this wanting to explore more in the ideas that its original author, Ray Bradbury, was attempting to explore and convey. What I found was a further enhancement of those pre-established concepts and reinforce a greater emotional tether between myself and its protagonist, Guy Montag.
Bradbury welcomes us a view onto a dystopian future that reveals itself as a distant cousin to the hard lock and grip of the totalitarian world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, though less so on the centralisation of its government, but rather on the emphasis of obscurity and manipulation of knowledge and our relationship with the media that houses that information. It resembles a protagonist who has been found with a sense of curiosity, that the world and his function within it don't seem all that right. The desire to question is intended by his opposers to be nipped in the bud.
The human and local scale that this world-building and characterisation that the author navigates us through offers a perspective that also induces us, the readers, to question the mechanics of this world and empathise with that feeling of loss that our protagonist seems to carry within throughout the entire narrative. I found myself looking at these various characters who are entrenched by this manipulative world and pitying their position. There was a desire in me to liberate them and save them from their unconscious self-infliction, and in the process, feeling this sense of defeat as I realised the futility of such an ambition.
It is when these larger moral, philosophical, sociological, and political questions are being triggered that I feel that surge of turning the page, excited to unpack more. However, Bradbury doesn't withhold his readers with momentum, thrills, and physical conflict, and unfortunately, this is where some of the problems lie. His writing during these passages come off, at times, with incoherence and repetition, attempting to generate tension through his crisscrossing rapidly of action and thought. This resulted in being more disruptive rather than an additive to its overall flow and impact; thankfully, these moments don't define the majority of the film.
As I said, one can find themselves in complete awe of the themes that Bradbury is trying to address here. It brings forth questions that you would be desired to ask your friends, family, and colleagues to further unpack and feed more to the experience that Bradbury has left for us. Perhaps that was his intention all along.
Bradbury welcomes us a view onto a dystopian future that reveals itself as a distant cousin to the hard lock and grip of the totalitarian world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, though less so on the centralisation of its government, but rather on the emphasis of obscurity and manipulation of knowledge and our relationship with the media that houses that information. It resembles a protagonist who has been found with a sense of curiosity, that the world and his function within it don't seem all that right. The desire to question is intended by his opposers to be nipped in the bud.
The human and local scale that this world-building and characterisation that the author navigates us through offers a perspective that also induces us, the readers, to question the mechanics of this world and empathise with that feeling of loss that our protagonist seems to carry within throughout the entire narrative. I found myself looking at these various characters who are entrenched by this manipulative world and pitying their position. There was a desire in me to liberate them and save them from their unconscious self-infliction, and in the process, feeling this sense of defeat as I realised the futility of such an ambition.
It is when these larger moral, philosophical, sociological, and political questions are being triggered that I feel that surge of turning the page, excited to unpack more. However, Bradbury doesn't withhold his readers with momentum, thrills, and physical conflict, and unfortunately, this is where some of the problems lie. His writing during these passages come off, at times, with incoherence and repetition, attempting to generate tension through his crisscrossing rapidly of action and thought. This resulted in being more disruptive rather than an additive to its overall flow and impact; thankfully, these moments don't define the majority of the film.
As I said, one can find themselves in complete awe of the themes that Bradbury is trying to address here. It brings forth questions that you would be desired to ask your friends, family, and colleagues to further unpack and feed more to the experience that Bradbury has left for us. Perhaps that was his intention all along.