Title Creator Date Era City Countrysort icon Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) Theme
Chocolat Director: Lasse Hallstrom 2000 United Kingdom

Pleasure is good; religion and conventional thinking is bad.

Follow your dream and disregard convention.

I'll See You Again Composer: Noel Coward 1929 1900s Manchester United Kingdom

Life is bittersweet

Sweet memories of love last forever

Design for Living Writer: Noel Coward 1932 1900s United Kingdom

Life can be giddy and bright. Facing up to one's anti-conventional values is important. Conventional morality must be questioned if it causes suffering and conflict.

You should follow your deepest values and accept them no matter how unconventional the outcome.

A rare combination of the wittiest, lightest of Noel Coward's style, along with deeper themes of romantic love, proper morality and how should one live.

Feast of Belshazzar Painter: Rembrandt Van Rijn 1635c. 1600s London United Kingdom

The only way to know the sense of life or world view of the painting is through it's history, since the image is very mixed. Shows an opulent and sumptuous world, but the people are obviously distressed over something. Assuming one knows its history, you could conclude it is an exercise in depicting the dangers of the worldly pursuits and wealth.

Billy Elliot Director: Stephen Daldry 2000 1991-2010 United Kingdom

Life is dirty but one can clean up.

Go after what you love.

Chariots of Fire Director: Hugh Hudson 1981 1971-1990 United Kingdom

A complete feeling of openness of the world to greatness of your own choosing.

Life is achievement.

Ardabil Carpet Classical Persian School: 16th century CE London United Kingdom

sumptuous eye candy.

Rob Roy Director: Michael Caton-Jones 1995 1991-2010 United Kingdom

Life is a struggle. The life you make for yourself can be difficult, but living it with strength and morality is the way to live. Happiness is possible in romance.

Heroism in everyday life leads to heroism writ large. A man works hard to lead his life and those of his extended clan in an honorable, productive, honest way. This is the everyday heroism. But dishonorable, evil men seek to steal from him and ruin him. This leads to a life of larger-than-life heroism to vanquish his mortal, and stronger enemies.

Love Actually Director and Screenwriter: Richard Curtis 2003 1991-2010 United Kingdom

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.

Greystoke Director: Hugh Hudson 1984 1971-1990 United Kingdom

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.

Landfall Shute, Nevil: 1940 1900 - 1950 United Kingdom

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.

Of Human Bondage Maugham, W. Somerset: 1915 1900 - 1950 United Kingdom

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.

Brief Encounter Screenwriter: Noel Coward 1945 1931-1950 United Kingdom

Passionate love. Tragic choices.

High romance is possible. Such love is unlikely to survive. This film manages to embrace two contradictory themes, leading to a major bittersweet outcome.

Johnson Wax Building Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright 1939 1900 - 1950 Racine United States

Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable.

To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy.

Etudes Choreographer: Harold Lander 1948 Pre-1950 Ballet/Dance New York United States

Thrilling pleasure at beautiful movement and great success at developing the best within you.

Hard work results in great achievement in life -- and that results in beauty and excitement in life.

Dangerous Beauty Director: Marshall Herskovitz 1998 United States

The world is a horrible split of conventional marital morality vs. honest but promiscuous morality. The way to live requires one sacrifice one's body for one's soul.

  1. The importance of accepting your own rules for living, your own morality.
  2. The grim metaphysical conflict for a Venetian woman of being a slave to a husband or a free woman requiring sexual work.
Diana Sculptor: Auguste Saint-Gaudens 1892 1900s New York United States

Serenity in action. But not a strong world view in any case, quite placid.

Spider Web Narcissi Table Lamp Designer: Louis Comfort Tiffany circa 1902 1900-1950 United States

Richness of form, sumptuous shapes.

Burn Notice Creator: Matt Nix 2007 Miami United States

Anything can be done if you are smart and motivated enough.

Die Hard Director: John McTiernan 1988 July 15 United States

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.

Mad Men Creator: Matthew Weiner 2007 Los Angeles United States

Men must sell their souls in order to live, and they are chauvinist pigs to boot. And women are sluts. Dark.

Romeo + Juliet Director: Baz Luhrmann 1996 1991-2010 United States

Tragedy is central to life.

Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives.

Staircase Group (aka Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale) Painter: Charles Wilson Peale 1795 Philadelphia United States

Perceiving accurately is important and playing with the artistic medium is fun.

Blue Phoenix Painter: Koyo Omura 1921 1900s Chicago United States

A pleasing and lush, possibly claustrophobic, world.

Day at the Beach Painter: J.C. Leyendecker 1932 1900s United States

Fun and cuteness.