"Man is a being in search of meaning." - Plato
The story of Tamara and the film Memento are of those 'happenstances' that lack meaning completely. Nah, I am just kidding! But it's true that both authors play with meaning by just having fun with words, with images... with making sense. (I won't say that they play with us, the readers/viewers, because this is not supposed to be a Reader-Response analysis nor a Psychoanalytic one, but a plain and simple Formalist analysis).
Okay, let's try again. Formally speaking both of them, Tamara and Memento, have as their main characters a male figure that is in a quest for knowledge, Marco Polo in the book "Invisible Cities" and Leonard Shelby in the film "Memento". (Wait! Before I get more into themes, plots... literary devices... and all those formal elements, did you notice how both titles have an interesting similarity? The third letter of each title is an M. Yes, look: taMara - meMento! Isn't that the letter the word Memory begins with? Just a thought.)
Both of the main characters find themselves surrounded by a multitude of signs that they are trying to decipher in order to know what they want to know. "Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages", says Marco Polo. But, do they really want to know? "I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next", Leonard says.
The story of Tamara and the film Memento are of those 'happenstances' that lack meaning completely. Nah, I am just kidding! But it's true that both authors play with meaning by just having fun with words, with images... with making sense. (I won't say that they play with us, the readers/viewers, because this is not supposed to be a Reader-Response analysis nor a Psychoanalytic one, but a plain and simple Formalist analysis).
Okay, let's try again. Formally speaking both of them, Tamara and Memento, have as their main characters a male figure that is in a quest for knowledge, Marco Polo in the book "Invisible Cities" and Leonard Shelby in the film "Memento". (Wait! Before I get more into themes, plots... literary devices... and all those formal elements, did you notice how both titles have an interesting similarity? The third letter of each title is an M. Yes, look: taMara - meMento! Isn't that the letter the word Memory begins with? Just a thought.)
Both of the main characters find themselves surrounded by a multitude of signs that they are trying to decipher in order to know what they want to know. "Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages", says Marco Polo. But, do they really want to know? "I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next", Leonard says.
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