Any way to remove the ugly vignette effect?

In all the cutscenes there is a wide, darkened bar appearing at the top and bottom of the screen. I'm not sure if it's aimed to make subitles more visible, or supposed to be some kind of aesthetic effect, but for me it ruins the visual side of the game by quite a bit. It makes eyes tire more easily by darkening large portions of the image too much. Half of the faces are covered by it on close ups, it kills the effect of otherwise excellent lighting in the game, and I really hope there is some way to turn it off. Any help/advice/suggestion will be greatly appreciated. 

To better illustrate what I have in mind, here is a set of screenshots. The first one is the raw screen, the second one had the dark bar (clumsily) removed by me in Photoshop.