| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Vance, Louis Joseph: | Brass Bowl, The |
The world is a delightful place. Good things happen to the deserving. |
Life as a gay, lighthearted adventure. |
| 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. |
| Sculptor: unknown | Niobe |
Human action is beautiful. |
Life is movement. |
| Author: Nevil Shute | Trustee from the Toolroom |
A feeling of gentleness, kindness and generosity towards good people in the world. |
The importance of pursuing one's personal values. |
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Bolero |
Harmony, grace exist. |
Two people as one. |
| Painter: Domenico Ghirlandaio | Old Man with a Young Boy |
Human companionship or family closeness is real. |
Quiet familial love. (A grandfather (perhaps) gazing upon a grandson, and vice versa, in a clear moment of happy communion.) |
| 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. |
| Director: Leo McCarey | Ruggles of Red Gap |
Happiness and fulfillment is in yourself. |
Personal declaration of independence from servitude |
| 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: Akira Kurosawa | Rashomon |
The world is terrible and full of disasters and mankind is awful and pathetic. |
Objectivity is a myth -- everyone sees a different reality, a different "story". |
| 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. |
| 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". |
| Director: Stephen Daldry | Billy Elliot |
Life is dirty but one can clean up. |
Go after what you love. |
| Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | Pieta |
Life is acceptance of pain. Resignation in the face of tragedy. |
Resignation and sorrow for a great personal loss. |
| 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. |
| Alexander, John: | Trees |
A sense of the world as dynamic and strong. |
Nature is wild and dynamic. |
| 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. |
| Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright | Johnson Wax Building |
Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable. |
To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy. |
| 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. |
| Director: Alan Parker | Fame |
Life is hard, but you can succeed, and it is worth it and exhilarating. |
Go after your heart's desire. |
| Composer: Alfredo Catalani | Ebben? Ne andrò lontana (aria from La Wally) |
Longing is the overall emotional tone of the music. The lyric gives reason to this overall tone. |
Sadness at having to leave forever the place where you were happy once. |
| Director: Baz Luhrmann | Romeo + Juliet |
Tragedy is central to life. |
Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives. |
| Domenichino: | Head of a Bearded Man |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |