I would much rather watch a film in a cinema than on TV. There’s no comparison in terms of the quality of the experience.
It’s not only the huge screen and superior sound quality, it’s the whole cinema experience: the darkened room, and the lack of distractions (when my fellow cinemagoers behave themselves) so that I can focus all of my attention on the action. And popcorn tastes 187 per cent better when eaten out of a bucket, in the dark, while you are staring at a big screen. That’s a scientific fact*.
It’s been almost three years since I moved to the UAE from Scotland and one of the first things I learnt was that however much I wanted to see a film on the big screen, I have to choose which ones to see very carefully, as sometimes the cuts made to films here render them unwatchable.
Now, I understand that some sensibilities and attitudes are different here from back home and I am only a guest in this country, so I have no right to expect my hosts to conform to my ideas of what is acceptable in film (or any other art form, for that matter). That’s fine. If a movie is too risqué for the local board of film classification, so be it.
I’m usually quite good at judging in advance which films are not worth going to see because it is likely that the censor’s scissors are going to ruin them.
But every so often, one sneaks past me. Which brings me to Top Five.
I’d read good things about the film and decided to see it last weekend. Big mistake.
It’s not that it is a bad film. Quite the reverse – it is a very, very good film. You should go and see it. Just not in a cinema here in the UAE, because some very important parts of it were missing when it screened here.
Many reviews, including the one published in The National, mentioned that the film's standout scene is one that features a number of big-name comedians making cameo appearances as themselves. Check out the cast list and you will see they include Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg and several others.
They were all missing from the version of the film that is screening here, because the entire scene was chopped out (Seinfeld does appears briefly, and inexplicably given that the scene that introduced him was cut, right at the end of the film).
Another, earlier scene that is a pivotal moment in the development of the relationship between Chris Rock and Rosario Dawson’s characters is also missing.
Presumably both scenes contained nudity or some sexual reference or explicit language that was judged by someone to be unacceptable. As I have said, that is fine and us expats have no reason to expect our ideas of what is acceptable, even in art, to be adopted by our hosts.
However, these scenes were clearly hugely important to the plot of the film, to the extent that the ending was almost incoherent with them removed.
So I paid Dh40 to watch a film that was ruined by cuts that destroyed the plot and the portrayal of the central relationship between the two main characters.
If a film is too risqué to play here without substantial cuts, fine. Make the decision and don’t show the film at all.
Do not hack huge chunks out of it, destroy the narrative and then charge cinemagoers full price (which is not exactly cheap) for the privilege of watching a film that has been butchered and rendered virtually unwatchable.
After the great Wolf of Wall Street fiasco of 2014, when 45 minutes – about a quarter of the running time – was chopped out of Martin Scorsese's film, things seemed to be getting better when Gone Girl was released last year with clever editing that eliminated the more explicit imagery while keeping the important dialogue and plot developments intact.
Alas, Top Five seems to suggest that Gone Girl was a one-off.
Another recent example of the problem was the sci fi drama Ex Machina, which was released the week before Top Five. In that case, the cuts didn't totally destroy the narrative but they did diminish it and make for an abrupt and slightly confusing ending.
Another annoying thing for cinemagoers is that the cuts can be very inconsistent. Some films cut all the swearing out. Some do not.
In Top Five, for example, despite all the cuts, there was still extremely explicit language left in the film. A lot of it.
Nudity tends to be more of a cut-and-dried issue here – with the operative word being "cut". Yet even here there is some inconsistency. For example, women cavorting in skimpy bikinis generally seem to be unacceptable – and yet there was plenty of flesh on display (albeit no outright nudity) in the Abu Dhabi scenes in Furious 7. Did that film get a pass because it was partly filmed here?
And then there are the local film festivals, at which films are screened uncut. Can somebody explain why it is acceptable for the films to screen in full at the Abu Dhabi and Dubai film festivals but not when they go on general release?
In any case let’s have more consistency and transparency. Common sense must prevail, and if a film is going to be seriously diminished – or completely ruined – do not screen it at all. Do not charge people good money to watch a movie that has been ruined and makes no sense.
At the very least, let’s have some indication at the cinemas and on their websites alerting customers that films have been cut and what the extent of the edits are, so that we can make more of an educated choice about whether to pay to see it.
I don’t imagine that Chris Rock knows that his film was hcked to pieces for its release here, but I wonder whether he – and other filmmakers whose work is diminished or ruined by cuts – would rather their work was not released at all than be released in such a poor state.
I did not go and ask for a refund after watching Top Five, even though I was very angry and felt like I deserved one, partly because I thought at the time that it was not really the cinema's fault.
But the more I thought about it, it occurred to me that maybe I should have, so that the local distributors get the message that it is NOT OK to release a film in such a diminished state and expect people to pay good money to see it.
* Based on my own yet-to-be-published research.
lcairney@thenational.ae