His features are grotesque, but they are softened by an expression of yearning tenderness.
In Billy Elliot, dance is at once an expression of yearning, and a symptom of frustration; Mrs Wilkinson is described as "unfulfilled - that's why she does dancing!" Julie Walters could so easily have given an over-egged and gamey performance as the gutsy mentor, and it is a measure of her intelligence as a performer and Daldry's assurance as a director, that her approach is kept within bounds.
"It is an expression of a yearning for peace".
We need to feel part of something bigger than ourselves, and sometimes I think Brexit is best understood as an expression of that yearning.
Ismaël has poignant conversations with the young woman in the hospital, played by Magali Woch, who has an expression of unappeasable yearning.
Her notes and recipes were an expression of her yearning, a way of assuaging something that was not homesickness exactly, but which must have felt a lot like it.
When we see a green lawn that has been watered with desalinated water, in Abu Dhabi or southern California or some other environment where people had once been content to spend their water thriftily in nurturing a single vine or shrub, we are looking at an expression of a yearning that may have been sparked by the novels of Jane Austen.
When the psalmist exults "Let me sing to the LORD, / for He requited me," at the end of a prayer that is only six verses long, and which has barely earned its right to such certainty, do we accept it as a statement of fact or as an expression of wishful yearning?
In the immediate vicinity, the only connection to the developed world's riches was a square thatched hut that had been painted with a large, black Nike logo, an expression of impossible yearning for a distant world -- in Davos, say, or Washington -- where $100 sneakers are the norm.
A lot of it is also an expression of my deep yearning for healing and peace in uncertain times.
He commended Leeds' support on Saturday – the crowd was 24,000 – and "enjoyed their singing", an expression of loyalty that carried the yearning of those let-down for the good old days before the club fell into the Machiavellian hands of Messrs Ridsdale, Bates et al. One half-expected to find it sponsored by HSBC.
