Creator Title Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) Theme
Director: Rob Reiner A Few Good Men

Justice should be fought for, needs to be fought for and can be fragile.

Commitment to a moral code is central to a good man's life.

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright Johnson Wax Building

Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable.

To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy.

Architect: Louis Sullivan National Farmers' Bank

Being able to breath freely -- expansively, and feeling that there are no limits to what man can do.

The world is expansively, infinitely rich.

Shute, Nevil: Landfall

Heroes and Heroines are self-made, by anyone at any level of intelligence who seriously pursues what is important in their lives.

Truth will triumph -- with perseverance.

Painter: William Hosner Her Face to the Wind

One gets the feeling that the young woman is able to stand strong in the world, with panache and beauty all at once.

Facing life in a fresh, strong, vivacious way.

Director and Screenwriter: Richard Curtis Love Actually

Romantic love, family love, filial love, and the love of friendship are of central importance to human existence, and are possible to achieve.

Wonderful experiences of love are found in many forms and places.

Sculptor: Antonio Canova Three Graces

The female human form is beautiful, graceful, ideal.

Quiet repose and sisterly love. The piece exudes a quiet elegance and peacefulness amidst the complex three-dimensional composition. The inclusion of "sisterly love" is less certain, except that taking into account the mythological background of the piece. It can be argued that one should not take that into account, so perhaps that should not formally be included in the theme.

Director: Hugh Hudson Greystoke

Life is Loss -- life is grim and culture is grim and the jungle is grim. All is grim.

The other important feature of the film emotionally is that Tarzan has been crippled by his circumstances of being brought up in the jungle -- he cannot live as a man, so the great tragedy of the story is that he has to return to the jungle, which is below primitive -- it is an isolated hell in which death is at every corner, and at best the companionship of apes. Given that the story partly portrays civilized men as brutes who relish killing animals, perhaps the emotional intent is to make the choice to return to the jungle as positive, but for this reviewer it is unutterably tragic and ugly.

Loss, Loss, Loss. Man as metaphysically alien from human culture.

Maugham, W. Somerset: Of Human Bondage

Life is a fearful gray spread of actions and in-actions without genuine values. We are all deformed in mind or spirit and should accept convention as demanded by those around us.

Man's life is outside his control. Conventionality is the final ideal.

Sculptor: Agesander Laocoon (Laocoön and His Sons)

Life is a desperate, agonizing struggle.

The heroic but agonizing defeat of Men. This sculpture certainly represents at the same time the heroic nature of men but cast into an impossible situation that can only be tragic.

Domenichino: Head of a Bearded Man

Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity

Worry is the way of the world.

Composer: Warren and Dubin Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Weariness & Sadness

Life is loss of dreams and sadness

Director: Coppola Francis Ford Godfather

Life demands death; life is a horror of killing and retribution. Life is tragedy and malevolence

Behind beauty and success lies corruption and death.

Director: John McTiernan Die Hard

The way to beat evil is to give no quarter, no compromise. Life is hard, but fighting for the right is rewarded.

Giving up in life is not an option.

Miron - Parish: Tzena Tzena Tzena

Joyous celebration

Joyous celebration

Director: Andrew Stanton Wall-E

The world is garbage, and more garbage and humans have destroyed the earth, because of their wanton consumerism.

Mankind is a blight on the universe, and only cute robots (as opposed to evil robots) can save the earth from human degradation.

Director: Carroll Ballard Black Stallion

Everything is possible between boy and beast, between an innocent human and mother nature.

Man and nature in harmony. At least this is the theme of the first half of the movie. See "Description" and "Context" info below for more on this comment.

De Felitta, Raymond: City Island

Anxiety and pain from all the lies and mistaken motives. Catharsis from the climax, leading to feelings of wanting to be truthful in life!

Lying is not the way to live.

Author: John Steinbeck East of Eden

Life is filled with great and important choices.

The battle between good and evil, guilt and innocence. Takes the position that we are influenced by many things, but ultimately we have free will.

Rand, Ayn: Anthem

The book starts out psychologically dark and disorienting because of the protagonist struggling with the radically collectivist world he was born into. But what shows even in the early pages, and grows to the climax is the triumphant struggle of a rare few who break free of the yoke of total mind control and become free to live a life as a conceptual human and rediscover what it means to be an individual. Thrilling and emotionally satisfying (unless the reader is a committed determinist.)

Ego and using one's individual mind is the core of being human.

White, James Terry: Hyacinths to feed thy soul

Hopeful. Even in poverty one can have beauty.

Beauty is a form of sustenance

Loysel, Jacques: La Grande Nevrose

The dynamic female body is beautiful and exciting. Although it may not explicitly suggest it, the nude and its tense position could be felt as erotic.

An animated female body is a vessel of perfection.

Author: Phyllis Brett Young Psyche

Optimistic, Hopeful, even under terrible circumstances.

We are beings of self-made soul

Director: Akira Kurosawa Rashomon

The world is terrible and full of disasters and mankind is awful and pathetic.

Objectivity is a myth -- everyone sees a different reality, a different "story".

Director: Stephane Gauger Owl and the Sparrow

A child shows sweetness and strength and determination.

Searching for family, for soulmates.