Most people aren't. Anyway Lean was a pictorialist with no overridding themes. See 'Empire of the Sun' which was a tribute to Lean. Anyway SS has one of the most astonishing visual imaginations in movie history so I don't know where you get that. You can take his movies to a film school to teach directorial technique. Very few scenes in his movies are routinely directed. Look at the D Day scene from SPR. As a picture of Hell on Earth that's equal to Guernica.
Perhaps we are just pointing out what moves us.
astonishing visual imaginations in movie
Translation: He's just another an AFI film-head who copies those better than himself and hopes nobody notices.