"The Bicycle Thief" (1948) and "Play it Again, Sam" (1972)

Most motion pictures have a narrative, characters, and the illusion that the characters control the narrative. The formula entertains and encourages. In "The Bicycle Thief," circumstances---without forming a narrative---control the characters, who conform without the luxury to dissent. The picture articulates no lesson, but supplies a reading of a society's condition in the pre-sweatpants era. It reminds one to care about those whose lives do not add up to a poem, and whose interests are best served by a non-parochial community whose optimal design is still an open question.

The lucky able to be unable to conform have the option of advertising their deviation as the norm. Doing his own jokes and others' jokes, his own acting but without undoing that of the others (the film is directed by Herbert Ross), Woody Allen broadcasts a character who cannot be unless he sees himself reflected against the minds and bodies of others. He speculates in jokes to reap immediate returns (or embarrassments) instead of investing in ideas. His activity, however, helps his fellow characters appreciate their long-term goals.

"A Disappearing Number" by Simon McBurney (2007)

What makes the primeness of number 7 so real (to some) as to be comforting (to some) is the absolute and shared confidence in the law that 7 is a prime. Absolute confidence in a law is attainable when external consistency (i.e., applicability across time and space) is replaced by internal logical consistency, as occurs in mathematics. What constitutes the logical is a matter of instinct, and is perceived as the beautiful. By pursuing the beautiful one pursues knowledge---in addition to gratification---as the concepts of the logical and the beautiful share their aesthetic origins. In creative work, the acute sense of beauty can replace the foresight of the relevance of one's creations.

Individuals will acknowledge proved mathematical laws to be true as long as the individuals' inborn concepts of beauty are similar. The mathematical truth is a property of the brain in the same way as the physical truth is a property of the outside world. An individual has the sense of control over experiments in mathematics that does not apply to experiments in physics---which justifies the distinction between mathematics and physics, for now.