[Scarlett.]

On the Guardian blog Maxim Jakuboiwski asks why it’s been decided that a film directed by Ben Affleck where a child is abducted should be not shown in the UK. As some of you know, the UK (or the UK’s media) spent a summer mulling over the sorry story of Madeleine McCann who was abducted in Portugal. Reacting to the ban of the film adaptation Gone Baby Gone, Maxim says:

So why has Gone Baby Gone provoked such a drastic reaction? Can’t the majority of viewers distinguish the solid line between fact and fiction and realise that fiction is often the best way to make us think about issues and problems?

I don’t see the point of withdrawing the film; who do they think they are protecting? After the McCann case broke both the BBC and ITV decided to rewrite storylines in, respectively, Eastenders and Coronation Street, due to purely coincidental similarities with the affair. “It was felt any storyline that included child abduction would be inappropriate and could cause distress to our viewers”, revealed a BBC spokesman. However Gone Baby Gone was actually written more than a decade ago and filmed a year beforehand and cannot in any way to be said to be exploiting the case.

This whole sorry state of affairs reminds me of studios and filmmakers hastily brushing out images of the Twin Towers in still unreleased movies shortly after the tragedy of 9/11. One production, a minor independent I can’t recall right now, went against the general consensus and did not do so, and the horizon of the late Towers was slowly panned across in a closing sequence. I found this a brave statement, poignant and apposite. The New York audience I viewed this with in a downtown movie house in December, just three months after 9/11 actually applauded.

Come on: we can make our own mind up. Let us see the film. Enough mollycoddling.