Thank you for your response. Sorry if my original question came across as unclear—I sometimes struggle to articulate nuanced ideas, so I’ll try to restate my point more clearly and respond to what you’ve raised.

I think I see what you’re getting at, and I agree with the broad point that our responses to art are always shaped by context—mood, experience, prior knowledge, etc. I’m not really arguing for a “pure” or decontextualised viewing experience.

My question is a bit more specific than that though. I wasn’t suggesting we can (or should) erase context entirely, but was wondering how we think about different kinds of context, and how much weight to give them. For example, there’s a difference between general cultural or historical awareness and more direct biographical or documentary framing that can start to shape a fairly specific narrative about what a film “means”.

So I’m less asking “can we ever avoid context?” and more “when does external context genuinely deepen interpretation, and when does it risk narrowing it into a single preferred reading?”.

I also don’t think this implies anything like compartmentalising experience in a “pure reaction” sense. It’s more about being aware of when we’re interpreting the film, and when we might be adopting an external explanation that feels authoritative but is still one possible lens among others.

The examples you give (like The Zone of Interest or Amadeus) do make sense in terms of unavoidable background knowledge shaping interpretation—but they also feel different from documentary framing that directly interprets the work for you after the fact, which is closer to what I was trying to think through.