| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architect: Unknown | Burgos Cathedral Crossing |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |
| White, James Terry: | Hyacinths to feed thy soul |
Hopeful. Even in poverty one can have beauty. |
Beauty is a form of sustenance |
| Sculptor: Agesander | Laocoon (Laocoön and His Sons) |
Life is a desperate, agonizing struggle. |
The heroic but agonizing defeat of Men. This sculpture certainly represents at the same time the heroic nature of men but cast into an impossible situation that can only be tragic. |
| Domenichino: | Head of a Bearded Man |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |
| 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. |
| Screenwriter: Chopra Vidhu Vinod | 3 Idiots |
Life can be fun and productive and exciting. As is true in some other Bollywood features, this story and the ideas behind it about pursuing the good life, has an honesty and clarity and benevolence that is not part of the U.S. movie scene. |
Be what you want to be; follow your passion in life |
| 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 |
| Screenwriter: Noel Coward | Brief Encounter |
Passionate love. Tragic choices. |
High romance is possible. Such love is unlikely to survive. This film manages to embrace two contradictory themes, leading to a major bittersweet outcome. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Composer: Giuseppe Verdi | Attila (live performance) |
Life is a mix of strength, heroism, romantic passion. The work is a long complex opera, so it has many other lyrical emotions as part of it, but this covers the basic sense of life. |
Loving a heroic woman leads to death |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Director: Coppola Francis Ford | Godfather |
Life demands death; life is a horror of killing and retribution. Life is tragedy and malevolence |
Behind beauty and success lies corruption and death. |
| 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. |
| Director: Leo McCarey | Ruggles of Red Gap |
Happiness and fulfillment is in yourself. |
Personal declaration of independence from servitude |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Sculptor: unknown | Niobe |
Human action is beautiful. |
Life is movement. |
| 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: 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". |
| 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: 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. |
| Myron?: | Riace Bronze A |
Man is strong and indomitable |
Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |