There is a lovely scene in which Cruz sings (or lip-synchs) a plaintive ballad, with her tears brimming and the words laying forth the theme of return, but that is just the problem: you feel another cog being added to the film's emotional engine, and something about the construction seems too efficient and pat.
And the theme of return or a promised coming – Baldr the Beautiful, expected after ragnarok; the Christian second coming; the moshiach (messiah) of Judaism - are mythical likewise, but this time as expressions of mankind's hopes for progress or a better world.
Many rappers have depicted themselves as Jesus crowned with thorns, and many more have appropriated the themes of return, rebirth and resurrection.
Sam Smith is already being tipped to scream the theme, although the idea of Adele returning shouldn't be discounted.
Aside from the odd flash of bigotry one theme keeps returning – boredom.
"Cold Mountain," with its theme of a return home from war along a twisting path of tests and ambushes, deliberately echoed Homer's "Odyssey".
Thursday's newspapers were filled with campy images of the toga party, hosted in September 2010 by a politician with the theme of "Ulysses returns home and fights his enemies".
The final position may have resulted from an attempt to place the books of the Hebrew Bible in a framework (Genesis and Chronicles both begin with the origin and development of the human race, and both conclude with the theme of the return to the land of Israel), but it was more probably the result of the late acceptance of Chronicles into the canon.
The theme of exploration was returned to with silk dresses embroidered with jellyfish and sea urchins.
For Loyauté, sweets also represent the generosity of Syrians, a theme he returns to repeatedly.
