| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Bolero |
Harmony, grace exist. |
Two people as one. |
| Writer: Noel Coward | Design for Living |
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. |
| Director: Fredi Murer | Vitus |
If you have the will, you can find the way to live the way you want. |
Living your life your own way is the only right way. |
| Sculptor: Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) Tuby | Chariot of Apollo |
The world has thrilling powerful men of action. There are no limits to what can be achieved. |
Elegant, physical power. The fantasy ability to fly through water and air with grace and ease. |
| Director: Emile Ardolino | Dirty Dancing |
Life is passionate and meaningful. |
The joy and passion of love and life and dancing, while learning integrity and independence. |
| Director: Baz Luhrmann | Romeo + Juliet |
Tragedy is central to life. |
Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives. |
| 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. |
| Myron?: | Riace Bronze A |
Man is strong and indomitable |
Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |
| 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. |
| Director: Raymond De Felitta | Two Family House |
Feelings of benevolence and optimism about life. Happiness comes from making choices for your own good. |
Going after what you want in life; Don't be stopped by conventional standards of the people around you. It takes courage to be selfish. |
| Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | David |
Man is a strong, indomitable creature who has the intelligence to overcome terrible odds. |
[requires assumption of some context of this work -- not a "cold" introduction to it]: A man able to face a daunting task, with tremulous calm and determination. This is the depiction of the David/Goliath story of the Bible in which David takes on the much more formidable Goliath and wins. |
| Sculptor: unknown | Niobe |
Human action is beautiful. |
Life is movement. |
| Architect: Anonymous | Sainte-Chapelle |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
| 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. |
| Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | Pieta |
Life is acceptance of pain. Resignation in the face of tragedy. |
Resignation and sorrow for a great personal loss. |
| Author: Emma Lazarus | The New Colossus |
Benevolent celebration of liberty as a beacon to a troubled world. |
A marvelous land of liberty offers welcome to the oppressed of the world. |
| Director: Oliver Stone | Wall Street |
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 |
| Author: Phyllis Brett Young | Psyche |
Optimistic, Hopeful, even under terrible circumstances. |
We are beings of self-made soul |
| Author: Nevil Shute | Far Country, The |
Life can be bright, happy and successful, but hard decisions must be faced and dealt with. |
A good and happy life is made up of self-directed actions, self-chosen goals. A less important theme is: |
| Director: Marshall Herskovitz | Dangerous Beauty |
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. |
The importance of accepting your own rules for living, your own morality. |
| Painter: Emil Carlsen | The Samovar |
The world is full of textural richness worth looking at. |
The richness of light and the objects it caresses. This is a paean to the richness of visual experience, but with the simplest of materials -- just a light source and two kinds of simple unadorned objects. |
| Director: Stephen Daldry | Billy Elliot |
Life is dirty but one can clean up. |
Go after what you love. |
| 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: Alan Parker | Fame |
Life is hard, but you can succeed, and it is worth it and exhilarating. |
Go after your heart's desire. |
| Domenichino: | Head of a Bearded Man |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |