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Andrew Kania

Bio: Andrew Kania is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Ontology (information science) & Interpretation (philosophy). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 3 citations.

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Phillip Novak1
TL;DR: Nolan's Memento as discussed by the authors is about interpretation, a concern that figures pretty directly in the protagonist's struggle to make sense of a life that exists for him only in the form of series of fragmentary texts.
Abstract: Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is about interpretation—a concern it figures pretty directly in the protagonist’s struggle to make sense of a life that exists for him only in the form of series of fragmentary texts. Because this character, Leonard Shelby, suffers from anterograde amnesia (an inability to create new memories), his immediate experience is a constant, frantic, sifting of signs. Strangely, he becomes a poignant model for human engagement with the world—for the difficulties involved in making meaning. But ultimately, his efforts at reading the texts that surround him, the text he has himself become, serve as a cautionary tale, as a kind of running commentary on the negative consequences of reading badly. At the same time, the record of his experience, which is designed to mirror that experience, functions as a tutorial on reading, as—at once—an exhortation to read carefully and well and as an ongoing test of the skills the film itself is working to inculcate. Memento not only requires close reading but provides a rationale for the practice. It is designed to make a case, in its unfolding, for why reading well matters.

1 citations