Book versus Movie!?!?!?

Question

What do you think about the Book Fahrenheit 451 and the movie Fahrenheit 451? Its THEME? its mood? its storyline?

my friend argues that the movie and the book are equal, "pretty much the same"...

i think they are not... not at all....

what do you say???

try to be as specific as possible..

Thank You!!!

Answer 1

It depends on your communication versus visual skills. Books are very good at making word pictures, things you imagine based on what you read. Movies do this work FOR you. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words. In that respect, the visual, movies are superior to books, but they lose a lot of the STORY LINE in translation from the written word to the visual image. NO movie has a story as good as the story in the words of the book. Some movies translate better than others, but no movie really compares to the book. Most movies suffer in the story because they have to drop a lot of the story to make the pictures. The other things which irks me about movies from books, is they change the story for dramatic effect which can result in a completely different story alltogether. Look at the Disney animated Hunchback of Notre Dame for example, compared to the classic black and white movie with Charles Laughton, and then to see how even the classic was distorted, read the original book. Moby d**k is another which was translated poorly, even though the version with Gregory Peck is one of the best I've ever seen, even though it only loosely follows the book and changes the ending as Ahab never "beckons" while tangled in the ropes on the white whale as shown in the movie, but this change did not interfere with the story. The book is filled with details of the whaling industry which never made it to the screen, but was important to the story line in the book. Fahrenheit 451 is social commentary which is clear from the book, but gets lost in the movie. Fahrenheit 451 is really about the consequences of the book burnings which went on in Europe before and during WWII, specifically in Germany. Read the book. The movie is NOT a very good substitute for reading the book.

Edit: Another example. There was never a documented romantic story such as was in Titanic, where they added a fictionalized romantic story which was completely bogus to the history. A better version of history was done in A Night to Remember, back in the 40's I think and even then, they distorted history having the band play as the ship sank beneath the water showing the musicians playing even as water surrounded them on deck, which according to survivors never happened. All movies take "liberties" for dramatic visual effects. Even supposed documentaries take liberties. Michael Moore is case on point. In one of his movies, he shows a bank giving away a rifle if you open an account. They show him walking in, handing over some papers and walking out with a rifle, apparently all in a few minutes. The problem is they did not show that the bank simply gave over a VOUCHER which could be redeemed at a local gun shop and Moore had to go through everything any other gun buyer had to go through, all of the paperwork, background checks, and the mandatory 3 day waiting period before he could walk out of the gun shop with a rifle, which was only PAID for by the bank voucher. He carried the rifle into the bank so he could be filmed walking out with it, and then in editing made it look like it all happened in a couple of minutes, minus all of the other stuff at the gun shop, which was not even mentioned. You be the judge...