The power of the story lies as much in the lucid, understated prose as the depiction of a future society split into a thousand schisms as Snake deals with love, prejudice and a host of moral and ethical dilemmas that characterise the fractured world.
In the Whitfields' dogged determination to be present in the present rather than to live in fear of the future, "Be Here Now" (the title is taken from the credo that Andy and Vashti had tattooed on their forearms) is as much a tender love story as it is a depiction of understated, real-life heroism in the face of an all-too-common tragedy.
The understated humor, dead-on depictions, and surprising and lyrical rhymes from Norman and charming illustrations by Jack Parham, both still in their teens themselves, can convey some worthwhile lessons to kids who want to know how to behave but do not want to hear it from adults.
While there was something endearingly naive about her role as besotted Winifred, and comically understated as the reactionary matriarch in Mrs Dalloway, her depiction of Martha displayed a ferocity previously unrevealed in earlier roles that tended towards either the respectable, down to earth, or emotionally obsessive, sad or caring.
The column capitals and frieze in the room contain depictions of shells, fish and seahorses, another typically understated but playful touch.
The emotional weather is unusually hot and sticky, and the themes of class antagonism and sexual cruelty are overt, even if the literal depictions of sex and violence remain oblique and understated.
This depiction probably understates Trump's devotion to making money, as well as his racism and nativism, both of which go back decades.
The Skin I Live In is Almodovar at the height of his powers, with its understated but powerful camera work, its use of massive paintings as décor and its depiction of multiple madness.
Indeed, "1920 Diary" will be instantly recognizable in its style and sensibility to anyone who has read Babel's "Red Cavalry" stories or his luminous "Tales of Odessa". Like the stories, the diary is full of a sudden mingling of lyricism and brutality, of intentionally atonal depictions of man's capacity for blind cruelty placed in juxtaposition to an understated agony at his sufferings.
Then again Shawky's depiction of Barbarossa's premature drowning in the Saleph River shortly after his defeat of the Turks is an understated, almost shocking highlight of The Secrets of Karbala.
