| 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. |
| Director: Fred Zinnemann | High Noon |
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". |
| Choreographer: Harold Lander | Etudes |
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. |
| Composer: Franz Lehar | Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) |
Love brings gaiety and joy to life. |
Love can be gay and tender, solemn and lighthearted, painful and joyous. |
| Director: Stephane Gauger | Owl and the Sparrow |
A child shows sweetness and strength and determination. |
Searching for family, for soulmates. |
| Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright | Robie House |
The world is open and has sweeping, unending possibilities. |
The essence of a house as shelter, and providing a sense of strength and privacy. That is, a structure that exudes strength through its massive cantilever and massive brick and stone forms, along with its big overhangs sheltering the windows to create a sense of privacy and enclosure, in its urban situation. |
| Composer: Lou Handman | Are You Lonesome Tonight? |
Sensuality and bitterness |
The remembrance of past love. |
| 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. |
| Author: Henry Kitchell Webster | King in Khaki, A |
Honesty is a noble and practical way of life. |
Business acumen produces both material wealth and moral right. The success of the entrepreneur in this story, along with his relation to all his staff and secondary and tertiary folks on the island who work for him -- makes him into a "king" based on important human relations and the rightness of his decisions that result in a successful business enterprise. A subsidiary theme might be termed the power of morality over physical power or economic "power". |
| Myron?: | Riace Bronze A |
Man is strong and indomitable |
Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |
| 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 |
| Painter: John White Alexander | Repose |
Life is extravagant and lush and sensual. |
Feminine Sensuality is a main theme, though one can argue that a related (equal theme or sub-theme) is: The Lushness of the Material World. The dramatic draped womanly figure pressing against a divan, whose figure is clearly oulined, shares the visual dominance of the painting along with the magnificent sweeps of her dress and the giant pillows, the massive backrest, and even the strong elements of the floor material and the golden back wall. All together a remarkable composition. |
| Domenichino: | Head of a Bearded Man |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |
| Author: Ayn Rand | Atlas Shrugged |
Life can be good; Men are competent to live happily; The world can be a shining, happy place to exist, if one is free. But novel also presents a dark, dystopian world to help make real that positive view. |
The crucial value of the human mind. |
| Architect: Unknown | Burgos Cathedral Crossing |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Director: Alan Parker | Fame |
Life is hard, but you can succeed, and it is worth it and exhilarating. |
Go after your heart's desire. |
| 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. |
| Composer: Warren and Dubin | Boulevard of Broken Dreams |
Weariness & Sadness |
Life is loss of dreams and sadness |
| 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: Michael Caton-Jones | Rob Roy |
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. |
| Playwright: William Shakespeare | Othello: the Moor of Venice |
Malevolence and horrible tragedy is unrelieved. Evil is potent. |
A great man can be gullible and controlled by an evil character. Or, an evil character can have potency in the world, because of the weakness of a good man. |
| Playwright: Edmond Rostand | Cyrano de Bergerac |
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. |