Film producers often prefer using historical events and literary sources to make mental images come to life. However, transforming an established narrative between an author and a reader consists of more than setting the scene for one story and its main characters. Tim Hamilton’s and Ramin Bahrani’s adaptions of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 manifest their artistic styles while maintaining the novels symbolic elements. Both adaptions are set in a dystopian world of oppression and manipulation. The government bastardizes and censors art it finds troublesome and considers possession to be a treasonous crime. Any unapproved art, mostly books, or as the film calls it, “graffiti” is burned at precisely 451°F by Captain Beatty, his ironically protagonist successor Guy Montag, and a crew of other firemen. The tyrannical government has assigned them this improbable job because it claims this contraband is a threat to society. Citizens are expected to relinquish their individuality and all illegal art forms. Although Ramin …show more content…
Bahrani eliminates Mildred, Montag's neurotic wife in the novel, as part of the cast in the film. He uses Montag's focus on Clarisse to create a new romance and inspiration which leads to the next variation of one of the main events found in every version, the burning of the old woman and her books. Montag's ultimate decision is reached at the raid on the old woman's home. The novel originally has the woman quote the martyr Hugh Latimer who said, “Play the man, Master Ridley …” Captain Beatty gives Montag a simple explanation of what she meant in the graphic novel, but Bradbury’s original intention was to use the literary allusion to foreshadow what happens next. In the written, graphic, and cinematic versions, the woman makes the absurd choice to escape existence along with her books. Bahrani takes this scene a bit further by adding his own plot