| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Architect: Guarino Guarini | Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo (Royal Church of St. Lawrence) |
The world is perfected. The joy of seeing complexity that is simplicity, i.e., that the rich complex vision arises from simple elements which because of their arrangement provide layers of visual thrills. |
Complex, soaring geometric order. |
| Singing Group: Soviet Army Chorus and Band | Wait for Your Soldier |
Happiness triumphs. |
The power of joy to motivate action. |
| 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: 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". |
| Composer: Warren and Dubin | Boulevard of Broken Dreams |
Weariness & Sadness |
Life is loss of dreams and sadness |
| 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. |
| Sculptor: Pio Fedi | Rape of Polyxena, The |
Strength and complex beauty are central. Vitality, passion and action are hallmarks of this work. |
Life is complex strife, entwined with strong god-like characters. |
| 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. |
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Bolero |
Harmony, grace exist. |
Two people as one. |
| 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. |
| Architect: Anonymous | Sainte-Chapelle |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
| Director: Stephane Gauger | Owl and the Sparrow |
A child shows sweetness and strength and determination. |
Searching for family, for soulmates. |
| Director: Hugh Hudson | Chariots of Fire |
A complete feeling of openness of the world to greatness of your own choosing. |
Life is achievement. |
| Director: Leo McCarey | Ruggles of Red Gap |
Happiness and fulfillment is in yourself. |
Personal declaration of independence from servitude |
| Director: Baz Luhrmann | Romeo + Juliet |
Tragedy is central to life. |
Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives. |
| Architect: Unknown | Burgos Cathedral Crossing |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |
| 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: Lasse Hallstrom | Chocolat |
Pleasure is good; religion and conventional thinking is bad. |
Follow your dream and disregard convention. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Composer: Lerner and Loewe | Camelot |
One must attempt to live by values, even though virtue is powerless and hopeless. |
Camelot: a medieval place of goodness and justice, and its inevitable failure. |
| Director: Stephen Daldry | Billy Elliot |
Life is dirty but one can clean up. |
Go after what you love. |