That the intent of a film-maker or an author does not come across to the audience is an old problem.
As an old example better known than some, Shakespeare’s Henry V is interpreted very differently by different commentators. Some see him a Shakespeare’s idea of an almost perfect king, a true hero. Some see Shakespeare pointing out how Henry V again and again falls below true virtue. They interpret the same scenes differently.
So what was Shakespeare’s intention?
Tolkien pointed out in various places that
The Lord of the Rings was not an allegory and that, mostly, attempting to interpret names in his works as keys to what he was writing about would not yield valid results. That doesn’t prevent commentator after commentator coming out with new explanations about how one should really understand Tolkien.
Again and again I have encountered conversations between and author and a supposed fan in which the supposed fan attempted to explain what an author supposedly really meant and the author rather convincingly denied it.
Douglas R. Hofstadter is obviously a very careful writer. His most popular work is
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid in which each chapter discusses at the same time a philosophical/logical concept and a musical concept while the chapter in its format imitates the discussion. And at the same time the book manages to be hilariously funny. in 1979 the book won both the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fictionand and the National Book Award for Science.
The 20th anniversary edition of the book contains a new prologue about what this very popular book was about. One senses Hofstadter’s frustration:
Needless to say, this widespread confusion has been quite frustrating to me over the years, since I felt sure I had spelled out my aims over and over in the text itself. Clearly however, I didn’t do it sufficiently often, or sufficiently clearly. But since I’ve got the chance to do it once more — and in a prominent spot in the book, to boot — let me try one last time to say why I wrote this book, what it is about, and what its principal thesis is.
In a word, GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.
Hofstadter goes on, filling in more details. That people didn’t get this is understandable because the book covers so many interlaced things, most of them worthy of a book on their own. Indeed Hofstadter had not really indicated that this, among so much that appears in his book, was for him the principle thread and meaning. Other readers found features of the book that was of more interest to them.
There is a common critical belief that it doesn’t matter what any literary (of film) creator says about his or her intent. All that matters is what the audience perceives and every perception is equally valid. So any literary or film or parts of it may have many contradictory meanings at the same time. That the perception of some of the audience sometimes matches that of the creator doesn’t particularly matter.
I disagree with this. When one speaks one is usually trying to get a particular meaning across. Sometimes the speaker may unintentionally be more ambiguous than he or she intended. Sometimes the listener may not properly hear or understand everything that the speaker says. Sometimes indeed it may be impossible to determine the meaning. But it is going too far to claim that therefore any meaning that may be read into an utterance is as valid as any other.
Often, as in the case mentioned by littlemanpoet, where the intent of Théoden’s actions don’t come across, misunderstanding occurs. But in every case it would be wrong to always blame the speaker/portrayer as not sufficient indicating intent and would also be wrong to always blame the perceiver for being imperceptive.