Fahrenheit 451 is a little strange, not in a Salvador Dali or David Cronenberg way but in a "Why?" sort of way. Why did this French director (one of France's greatest), who had by this point proven himself adept at making (sometimes quirky) dramas of love and sadness with moments approaching the sublime, choose to adapt a science fiction novel? Why did he decide to make this film in color when all of his previous ones were black and white? And most of all, why did he film it in English? As the movie unfolds, its distinct lack of feeling signals a very different type of film from many of his others, and this becomes our key to answering all of these questions. Truffaut's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic Orwellian novel makes not for a particularly enjoyable cinematic experience but a good, and important, one nonetheless.

The film stays very true to its source. It is a future society in which books have been outlawed because, according to the authorities, they keep people from being happy. Without books, no one can dream about what possibilities the world holds or about what is wrong with it. People caught in possession of books have their collections, and sometimes their houses, burned by "firemen," whose job it no longer is (nor has been for some time) to put out fires. Even many of the novel's smaller plot points are kept in the film, all the way up to its ending. Any viewer who has read the book will experience the same story they have read but in a carefully visualized way. This is how all adaptations should be.

In the opening credits, the viewer is assaulted with color. The camera incrementally cuts to shots of surveillance cameras, and zooms in quickly on each. Each one of these cuts is fully saturated with one color, such as green, red, or purple. It is the film's first step of critiquing technology for the sake of technology. It's as if the film is saying, "You want color? Here's your color!"
This isn't the only interesting thing about the credits, though. All of the opening credits are voiced over; there is no text whatsoever. This is done to give us a preliminary taste of a world without books. The roles are announced authoritatively: we are forced to accept them as truths instead of being allowed to see them for ourselves. All of this adds up to create a purposely unpleasant yet intriguing opening method that immediately demonstrates the importance of substance over style.

For the most part, the film focuses on the two main areas of the life of the main character, Guy Montag. There is him at work as a fireman, and there is him at home as a husband. They both have something to offer, but, not surprisingly, the most important moments concern him and his book-burning. As powerful as these moments are, they also come across as effortless. At the beginning of the film, a girl asks him about his work as a fireman, and as he off-handedly describes burning books of Tolstoy, Faulkner, and Walt Whitman, his words come across as painfully obscene. The sadness of destroying literature, we then realize, is not something that needs emphasis. Later in the film, when a large pile of books is set ablaze, the camera shows close-ups of their text as the pages burn away. During this scene, viewers will probably find themselves trying to read the words before they're gone . . . and by doing so discover how important they are. Truffaut has done a magnificent job of drawing a genuine feeling of sadness from the viewer, even if most of the characters don't care.

Montag's personal life and marriage are empty, as are the lives of the other law-abiding citizens. His wife, who could be very beautiful but rarely makes herself stand out in any way, is perpetually unfeeling, due to the drugs she is supposed to take (much like the mind-numbing drugs in THX 1138). The only meaning in her life is her television, which seems to have but one ongoing television show hosted by a woman who everyone seems to genuinely believe is a cousin, and which is otherwise populated by characters who everyone considers "family." Montag's wife and friends watch this program (which apparently is the only channel on TV) almost as if their lives depend upon on it, receiving trivial gratifications which are the only things they ever hope for. There is but one moment in the entire film in which she exhibits a passion for anything -- when she receives a full blood transfusion and awakens with no drugs in her system.

This is a story about hope and feeling. The reason this director, whose films are often packed with emotion, chose to make one completely bereft of it is to show how infinitely more sad the world would be without feelings, even feelings of sadness. Ultimately, books, as well as movies, are indeed artifacts of feeling, not knowledge. In this sense, Fahrenheit 451 repeats the most important motif of science fiction -- the danger of trusting knowledge over feeling.

The film works because it shows how sad the world could be if we ever managed to fully suppress our feelings. If it makes for a movie that doesn't urge repeated viewings, it is because its illustration is grim. It lacks all of the dynamics that make movies enjoyable because presents as a warning a world without those dynamics. You might not like Fahrenheit 451, but you will definitely value it.