Ivor,

How you see a film (or anything) depends on several elements: your previous knowledge, education, agenda, relationship to (in this case) films and film-making, your idea of authority re facts and history.

These are pretty basic arrows in the postmodernist's quiver. Also called post structuralism. Understanding that through experience, language, semiotics (the "sign" and "signifier" you may have seen reference to at some time or other), cultural activities, etc, everyone has a somewhat different understanding of the meaning of a work, whether on the printed page or on the screen.

If an audience's perception of reality is shaped by films, that's the audiences's lookout.

What is reality? Whose reality? Is the narrator reliable or unreliable? It is the "audience's lookout," as you say. Not only understanding the story, but understanding the film, if I can make a distinction.

It was an interesting remark.

SRS