The Final Cut (2004)

Director: Omar Naim
Main Casts: Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, James Caviezel
Watched: 16th May, 2007. Wednesday 10.00pm
DVD: Lions Gate in association with Cinerenta, Speedy Video Distributors S/B



If we look back in our lives, and if we will remember hard enough, some moments will surface in our minds; those moments that we thought we should have forgotten for the longest time. And some of us may have felt it, where this one single memory sucks us in like a toilet bowl, into the sewage of deep hurt, guilt or let downs that cripple our very being or our fragile confidence. Or maybe a time when we rose above all storms and saw our visions through; so seductive are our memories, as if we were seeing it right before our eyes, or can we?

And imagine at the end of our lives, lying in the glass coffin, with our spirits looking at the ceremony from above, we might wonder, do people know what kind of person was I, really? How I thought of those around me when I was alive, really? How virtuous was I, really?

Well, most of us will have our last chance, having somebody to gracefully save or enhance our life impressions through their eulogy for us, recited in front of anyone who cared to come for our wake service. Which is good.

Now, what if, while cocooned in lifelessness, yet, we could still speak for ourselves, and everyone else listens? What if we could put those people into our heads to see what we saw when we were alive, to hear what we heard, and maybe imagine feeling what we must have felt? By then, could we, as persons, handle our power to perform this 'final act'?

- - - - - § - - - - -


Alan on the right, Louis left

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m here for the day with my parents.”

“I’m Louis”

“Hi, I’m Alan”

• • • • •

A Cutter's Story

Alan Hackman works a queer profession; one that resembles very closely with video editors. The Final Cut invites us to imagine, right now at this time, doctors could help slip in a ‘Zoe’ chip-corder (as opposed to camcorder) in our stillborn baby’s brain, so that whatever the baby sees and hears for the rest of his life will be recorded; second by second. When a chip-carrier dies, a “Cutter’s” job is to immerse himself in the lifelong footages, choose scenes that could representatively signify the deceased, arrange them into a 2-hour feature (called the “Rememory”), and have the Rememory shown during the person’s wake service.

- - - - - § - - - - -

Louis shouts, “Alan, just stop!”
Alan continues walking across a narrow wooden plank over a floor opening

“Come on Louis” said Alan when he reached the other side
“Just don’t look down”

Took a deep breath - “I’m coming”
Louis walks to the middle of the plank when-
“I CAN’T MOVE!”

“Hold my hand, Louis!”

Louis jumps towards the concrete slab. The jump falls short, only his
hands were clung to the surface. In a second, his hands no longer could
hold the weight of his body.

Alan saw Louis’ hands slide off the surface, disappeared from sight, and felt the loudest thump of his heartbeat when Louis’ body rammed the ground, four floors down…

• • • • •

The necklace Alan found hanging at the edge of the opening surface, where Louis fell, follows him throughout his life, together with the moment’s memory it carries. And a lifetime was the very thing Alan gave to be a cutter.

Alan carefully chooses “pleasant scenes” for Rememory videos according to how the family wants to remember the deceased. He will be the only one who sees what is left behind the glossed up 2-hour Rememories – Best of glories, and worst of shits.

• • •

“Tell me something. Why is your name the first on the list for cutting scum bags and low lives?”- Asked Fletcher, an anti chip implant activist.

“’Cause I forgive people long before they could be punished for their sins.

• • •

Most of his colleagues could bear not a second, seeing for example abusive behaviors inflicted upon a victim. To Alan, he thinks, who could commit more evil than himself who caused somebody else’s death? Cutting jobs almost become like a cavern that allows him to nurse the immense guilt that coloured his entire consciousness; becoming his attempt to serve a free man’s sentence for his sins.



Being habitually feeling about life in such a way, Alan never really took seriously the social risks of Rememories – factual memories, but re-sequenced. Protests of anti-implant activists never quite bothered him, be it being called a liar, in the name of human rights or anything beyond that. Alan simply thinks he is contractually responsible for caring and consoling the living people who were close to the deceased, just that.

• • •

“Alan, are you going to fix what daddy can remember?” – A dead attorney’s daughter, Isabel asked

“In a way, yes.”

“Can you make him forget that I drew crayon on his contract? And that I
pulled dolly’s hair until she cried? Will he forget that?”

“Yes, he will forget that. “
“But make sure you don’t.”

• • •

‘Just a respectful cutter’ he thinks himself to be, until he stumbles on this attorney’s memory that has Louis Hunt recorded in it, the boy who supposedly fell to his death in front of his eyes 30 years ago. Somehow, Louis lived and became Isabel’s English teacher, but finally died in a car accident a year before their conversation. In his desperation to know exactly how Louis survived the fall, he secretly searched the Zoe chip sales database, hoping that Louis might have had a chip implanted in his brain. Disappointment met him at the end of the ‘H’ list - no Hunt, only to turn into a thunderous jolt when he returned his gaze to the start – “H” for Hackman A. W. – a Zoe chip in himself!









Waves of disbelief, confusion and dread hit him while he sank helplessly into the deafening echoes of reality. He can no longer bear seeing himself in the mirror, knowing that someone else will have every liberty over the most private of thoughts throughout his life. Only at this point did the angry protestors made sense to him.

• • •

“That’s me!”

- - - - - § - - - - -




The Seven Sins of Memory

Given the juicy possibilities of exploring social and ethical repercussions that a Zoe chip might bring about, Omar takes The Final Cut on a psychological ride. Not surprising when the whole show throws all eyes on Alan Hackman.

In the field of Cognitive Psychology, Schacter D. L. assembled a list of 7 ways our memory can go out of whack, preventing us from remembering things as accurately as a video camera would. We receive Omar’s introductory psychology lecture after a Rememory screening when the brother of the deceased approached Alan-

“Hey did you change the colour of our fishing boat?

“I'll never do that”

“Are you sure? Because I remember it being green, not red.
Weird, like all my memories in that boat had been green.
Like it just, blew my mind.”

“Maybe it was green.”

At this juncture I went, what did he mean ‘maybe’? What was making the difference here? Only later along the show did Alan explain while showing his girlfriend a private cut of dreams and hallucinations recorded inside the chip because of certain defects. So instead of objectively recording what hits the eye, the chip records what the mind sees.










And Alan would discover the second answer himself. Knowing now that he had a chip in him all the while, he decided to brave a pre-mature Zoe playback, which risk him losing his entire memory or even consciousness if any error happens during the procedure.



As his history played before his eyes, he simply allowed some important episodes in his life to register again in his mind and soul. He quickly came to the part when he was 10 years old, inside the old building with Louis. He recoiled as the fall repeated itself, letting all the guilt he carried dance amok in his vulnerableness. He continued watching himself “remember” running frantically to the ground floor, seeing Louis lying flat on his back; little Alan traces backwards, away from the body. “Clunk-K-lunk”, he looks down and saw his own feet stepping on a pool of deep red liquid.




There and then, 40-year old Alan realized that it wasn’t blood that he thought he stepped on when he was there at age 10. It was just red paint. And he heard Louis coughing faintly in the background of his own loud panting, which he didn’t notice at that time when all fears numbed his senses.

How much more soaring freedom could he have felt to know the truth that the sin he brought with him throughout life was really just a sin of the memory??

"I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen. And he fell...
but he was breathing, it wasn't blood, it was paint. Now i remember..."

“I Remember…”

- - - - - § - - - - -

Interesting Afterthoughts

Although the film explores largely on Alan’s thinking and emotional changes, Omar subtly inserts a few questions here and there, though he didn’t answer them. At the start of the show, where we are introduced to Alan’s profession, his cutting client came to preview his work. And on farewell commented

“You’ve done a hell of a job with him, Mr Hackman. You’ve done him son-of-a-bitch right.”

And that leaves us wondering, who is he to decide what footage chosen was ‘right’ or 'wrong'? Isn’t the deceased the only one who knows which periods of his life are most significant, representative and impactful for him? They may have his visual and audio footage, but who are they to judge what meanings had the deceased given to those episodes?


And that leads us to another question. Who then is a funeral for? The dead, or the living? Of course we already know what Alan thinks. In rejecting the notion of Rememories being lies, he holds strong beliefs that those living are the ones needing peace, needing respect and consolation in times of grief. Is it not true that even we write eulogies to help us remember the dead person the way we want to remember him/ her by?

• • •

On a personal level, more of Robin Williams’ serious shows come across to me always as moving and often highly emotional. His acting in The Final Cut really drew me right into engaging in the material and even “feeling for” what Alan “must have been feeling. His facial tweaks of the slightest inch sent me into a ruthless empathy with Alan.

- - - - - § - - - - -
Sharon Chong, published 24th May, 2007
12, ss 25/21
:o)