| Title |
Creator |
Date | Era | City | Country | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wall Street | Director: Oliver Stone | 1987 | 1971-1990 | United States |
There are bad people in power who use ordinary people as pawns in their endless pursuit of money. Those who are not ruthless are sheep to be slaughtered by the rich and powerful. Greed is bad. |
Financiers are amoral money-grubbing backstabbers, i.e., desire for money corrupts |
||
| High Noon | Director: Fred Zinnemann | 1952 | 1951-1970 | United States |
There is palpable evil in the world. There is heroism in the face of evil in the world. The movie is full of fear and foreboding and betrayal. |
Civil Society is the ideal, and worth fighting for. Doing what is right is the right way to live. Don't let the evil bastards win. The theme is expressed repeatedly in the movie via the contrast of the Marshall who grimly faces the need to do what he lives for, despite the death facing him, vs. the mealy mouthed town folk, many of which who won't fight for their civil society, and vs. the deputy marshall who portrays the sellout who will give into evil force in order to "get along". |
||
| Cyrano de Bergerac | Playwright: Edmond Rostand | 1897 | 1900s | France |
Life can be exciting. Life can be grand, literally. There is also some great sadness about consummated love, since it is portrayed as unreachable. |
The importance of independence and independent thought. Compromise is deadly to one's soul. Sub-themes: a) Doubt of one's goodness because of an incidental fact (physical feature) is terribly damaging and tragic. b) Helping someone by faking reality is damaging and can come to no good. |
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| 3 Idiots | Screenwriter: Chopra Vidhu Vinod | 2009 | 1991-2010 | India |
Life can be fun and productive and exciting. As is true in some other Bollywood features, this story and the ideas behind it about pursuing the good life, has an honesty and clarity and benevolence that is not part of the U.S. movie scene. |
Be what you want to be; follow your passion in life |
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| 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. |
