| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Director: Hugh Hudson | Chariots of Fire |
A complete feeling of openness of the world to greatness of your own choosing. |
Life is achievement. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Painter: William Hosner | 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. |
| 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: 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. |
| Author: Henry Kitchell Webster | Real Adventure, The |
Life is wonderful as long as you realize that life has to be earned the hard way. |
Creating your self is the only way to live. |
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Flying Fish |
A heightened sense that Life is fantastically unbounded by daily cares. Life is imbued with unlimited potential and ease of movement. |
Life is light and fluid. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Dancers: Torvill and Dean | Bolero |
Harmony, grace exist. |
Two people as one. |
| Shute, Nevil: | Landfall |
Heroes and Heroines are self-made, by anyone at any level of intelligence who seriously pursues what is important in their lives. |
Truth will triumph -- with perseverance. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Loysel, Jacques: | La Grande Nevrose |
The dynamic female body is beautiful and exciting. Although it may not explicitly suggest it, the nude and its tense position could be felt as erotic. |
An animated female body is a vessel of perfection. |
| Myron?: | Riace Bronze A |
Man is strong and indomitable |
Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |
| 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: 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. |
|
| 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. |
| Sculptor: Antonio Canova | Three Graces |
The female human form is beautiful, graceful, ideal. |
Quiet repose and sisterly love. The piece exudes a quiet elegance and peacefulness amidst the complex three-dimensional composition. The inclusion of "sisterly love" is less certain, except that taking into account the mythological background of the piece. It can be argued that one should not take that into account, so perhaps that should not formally be included in the theme. |
| 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. |
| Architect: Unknown | Burgos Cathedral Crossing |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |