All art has a ‘message’.
But do you consider all films art? In a broad, generic sense, all films do convey messages. And that’s an argument liberals in particular are always stressing to me, saying every single artifact is innately embued with politics. In other words, EVERY film is propaganda of some kind. I don’t really buy into that. But some films are designed to convey an ideology, while others might be strictly designed to appeal to an aesthetic, while yet others might be made for the singular need to fill as many empty theater seats as possible.
Generally speaking, I don’t like films that are deliberately peddling ideology, as the self-consciousness of those efforts invariably take me ‘out’ of the story. That’s probably also why, as a film buff, I have a preference not for classics, but for little b-films, which are so distilled down to basics and are less apt to serve up unwanted subtexts.