Creator Title Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) Theme
Director: De Felitta, Raymond 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.

Designer: Esherick, Wharton Fireplace and Door Very orderly exuberance, via "explosive" geometry
Author: Steinbeck, John 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.

Miron - Parish Tzena Tzena Tzena Joyous celebration

Joyous celebration

Hiroshige Senso-ju Temple at Asakusa Pure, simple, quiet tranquility.
Designer: Eiffel, Gustave Eiffel Tower The works of Man are thrilling.
Rudyard Kipling The Ballad of East and West

When two sworn opponents recognize each other’s heroic qualities, their enmity dissolves. We feel inspired to see that  intelligent and courageous men can recognize what is truly fundamental in the character of each individual.

Though different cultures may be fundamentally opposed, two individuals from such opposites may fully transcend those differences and respect each other for their virtues.

Designer: Anonymous Confectionary Basket from Japan, Fukui region Life can be dynamic and purposeful and intriguing -- because of the dynamic form and economy of materials and diagonal symmetry of the composition.
Choreographer: Lander, Harold 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.<br>

Director: Kurosawa, Akira 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".

Director: Hudson, Hugh 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.

Classical Persian School Ardabil Carpet sumptuous eye candy.
Painter: Alexander, John White 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.

Playwright: Rostand, Edmond 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.

Painter: Hosner, William Her Face to the Wind One gets the feeling that the young woman is able to stand strong in the world, with panache and beauty all at once.

Facing life in a fresh, strong, vivacious way.

Sculptor: Fedi, Pio 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.

Composer: Coward, Noel I'll See You Again Life is bittersweet

Sweet memories of love last forever

Director: Hallstrom, Lasse Chocolat Pleasure is good; religion and conventional thinking is bad.

Follow your dream and disregard convention.

Maugham, W. Somerset Of Human Bondage Life is a fearful gray spread of actions and in-actions without genuine values. We are all deformed in mind or spirit and should accept convention as demanded by those around us.

Man's life is outside his control. Conventionality is the final ideal.

Painter: Veronese, Paolo Wisdom and Strength Sumptuousness is good, and the human form is good.
Director: Herskovitz, Marshall 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.

1. The importance of accepting your own rules for living, your own morality.
2. The grim metaphysical conflict for a Venetian woman of being a slave to a husband or a free woman requiring sexual work.

Director/Writer: Elliott, Stephan Easy Virtue

Love isn't easy, but it is glorious.