Thinking Through Film Stranger Than Fiction
PV 2006 – THINKING THROUGH FILM ASSIGNMENT 1
Konstantinos Kapoutsis
G20594930
‘Investigate how the work of a chosen screenwriter or director explores and illuminates a particular philosophical issue’.
‘’Stranger Than Fiction’’ 2006
Zach Helm is a writer born in California, USA and he is mostly known for the film ‘’Stranger than Fiction’’ for which he won awards such as Literary Award at PEN Centre and NBR award at National Board of Review in USA and was also nominated for the Saturn Award at Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.
‘’Stranger than Fiction’’ is a film that illuminates many philosophical themes such us existentialism, free will and determinism but this essay is focused on epistemology (theory of knowledge). Knowledge and the differences between reality, dream or fiction have been discussed by many philosophers such as Socrates, Thaetus, Plato and Descartes who with discussions, rational or empirical thinking, tried to approach a distinctive border between these terms.
This is a story about a man named Harold Crick. And his wristwatch. Harold Crick is a boring IRS employee who lives a quiet and uninteresting life until the day he starts hearing a voice in his head. This voice sounds like a female narrator who narrates parts of his own life. In order to prove to himself that he is not actually insane he visits a psychiatrist who suggests that he has schizophrenia. During his visit he mentions that the voice has a developed vocabulary she suggests to him to visit a famous literature professor, Jules Hilbert. During his search for this strange narrator he meets a beautiful woman who works at a bakery shop whom he falls in love with. While his life now has meaning for him, this voice warns that he is soon to die soon. The worst part is that this voice is not only in his head but belongs to a writer Kay Eiffel and Harold Crick is her upcoming book’s character.
From the beginning of this film (Stranger than
Konstantinos Kapoutsis
G20594930
‘Investigate how the work of a chosen screenwriter or director explores and illuminates a particular philosophical issue’.
‘’Stranger Than Fiction’’ 2006
Zach Helm is a writer born in California, USA and he is mostly known for the film ‘’Stranger than Fiction’’ for which he won awards such as Literary Award at PEN Centre and NBR award at National Board of Review in USA and was also nominated for the Saturn Award at Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.
‘’Stranger than Fiction’’ is a film that illuminates many philosophical themes such us existentialism, free will and determinism but this essay is focused on epistemology (theory of knowledge). Knowledge and the differences between reality, dream or fiction have been discussed by many philosophers such as Socrates, Thaetus, Plato and Descartes who with discussions, rational or empirical thinking, tried to approach a distinctive border between these terms.
This is a story about a man named Harold Crick. And his wristwatch. Harold Crick is a boring IRS employee who lives a quiet and uninteresting life until the day he starts hearing a voice in his head. This voice sounds like a female narrator who narrates parts of his own life. In order to prove to himself that he is not actually insane he visits a psychiatrist who suggests that he has schizophrenia. During his visit he mentions that the voice has a developed vocabulary she suggests to him to visit a famous literature professor, Jules Hilbert. During his search for this strange narrator he meets a beautiful woman who works at a bakery shop whom he falls in love with. While his life now has meaning for him, this voice warns that he is soon to die soon. The worst part is that this voice is not only in his head but belongs to a writer Kay Eiffel and Harold Crick is her upcoming book’s character.
From the beginning of this film (Stranger than
Bibliography: Mason, Andrew, Plato, Acumen, October 2010 Toates, Frederick, Coschug-Toates, Olga, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Class Publishing, September 2002. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, eBooks@Adelaide, 2014 Descartes, René; Moriarty, Michael , Meditations on First Philosophy : with Selections from the Objections and Replies, Oxford University Press, 2008 Prado, C.G, Starting with Descartes, Continuum International Publishing, June 2009 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1590998/?ref_=tt_ov_wr http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ http://u.osu.edu/freewill/descartes-2/descartes-on-human-error/