One Hour Photo
Review
by : Neil Wright
Starring:
Sy Parrish (Robin Williams), Nina Yorkin (Connie
Nielsen), Will Yorkin (Michael Vartan), Jakob Yorkin (Dylan
Smith)
Directed by: Mark Romanek
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One Hour Photo is a subtle, bitter movie whose main character,
Sy Parrish, echoes the desperation and compulsions of Psycho's
Norman Bates and Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, and the loneliness
of Edward Hopper's paintings of anonymous, isolated people
in silent turmoil. It is a disturbing story, illuminated by
harsh fluorescent lights that blur shadows and reality.
In its
own strange way, One Hour Photo is similar to American Beauty.
Both films are really about the desperate yearnings for things
that we all want; a beautiful family, friendship, love, and
a job that we can perform well. Each film features sad middle-aged
men who pursue these ideals with, frankly, illegal methods.
One wants the high school beauty queen and tries to sleep
with the teenager, the other wants to be remembered and loved
as a surrogate uncle and stalks a young family. What is odd
is that I empathize with both men. However, Robin Williams'
Sy differs from Beauty's Kevin Spacey if only by the fact
that he shares a closer kinship with would-be assassin John
Hinkley than Lolita's Humbert Humbert. We are not asked to
forgive Sy, but merely understand the emptiness within that
causes him to break through the walls of professional behavior
into the realm of stalking.
We meet
Sy Parrish as he is being photographed and booked by the police.
Through flashback, punctuated by Sy's quiet and unassuming
voice-over, the story of how he came into police custody is
revealed. Sy is the senior technician at the photo lab in
a suburban Savmart, a soulless, orderly world whose sun is
the constantly humming glow of fluorescent bulbs. Like Sy
is from the rest of the world, his department is separated
from the rest of the store by what seems to be miles of tiled
floor. The cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth is these scenes
is particularly striking. The harsh and overwhelming light
is so stark that it lends an almost supernatural presence
to the Savmart. This is an unnatural world that would incubate
monsters with an over saturation of false light.
In the
photo lab, Sy is courteous and obsequious to the customers.
He'll develop your pictures without visible judgment, whether
you are the lady who only photographs her cats, or the local
amateur pornographer. Sy is meticulous about his customer
service, and only when his world is threatened by disorder
is a volcanic temper revealed. Our first glimpse of this occurs
when he excoriates a lazy repairman who does not want to calibrate
an automatic developer to Sy's specifications.
If you
are really lucky, you might even get the full Sy Parrish treatment
and become the locus of his envy and need to fill the void
in his life. Such is the case of the Yorkins, an apparently
happy and beautiful family who are Sy's favorite customers.
They are Nina (Connie Nielsen), her husband Will (Michael
Vartan), and their nine-year-old son Jakob (Dylan Smith).
When the
Yorkins come in for their developing needs, Sy is only too
happy to help. Often he will give larger photos than the size
requested. As a bonus he develops a set for himself so he
can gaze upon them at his leisure, imagining a life with the
family as "Uncle Sy."
Sy's life
is measured by routine. This entails going to work, eating
at a lonely diner (ironically named "Family Restaurant") which
brings to mind Hopper's painting "Nighthawks," and watching
a small television in his gloomy apartment. He experiences
a charge of energy only when the Yorkins provide him with
more snapshots that make up an intimate collage he has constructed
of lives vicariously experienced. When it is slowly revealed
to Sy that the Yorkin household is not all smiles and sunshine,
he begins to disintegrate and take more desperate measures
to insinuate himself into their lives.
Writer/Director
Mark Romanek has created a chilling view of the power of images,
and the deception that smiles on paper can hide. As Sy observes
accurately, "No one takes a photograph of something they want
to forget." Things that we wish to forget, pain and suffering
are often hidden by false smiles, or are simply not photographed
at all. This may explain why there are so few photos of Sy
throughout the movie. He does not want to be remembered as
the sad and solitary man that he is. Instead, he violates
personal boundaries like a spiteful child to merge himself
into the lives of others. Whether he is conscious of this
is up to debate.
Robin
Williams is genuinely creepy as an utterly banal monster in
this tale. Like the murderous author he played earlier this
year in Insomnia, Williams is able to project a logical rationale
that supports and defies his character's psychosis. This is
not the only creep that Williams has played in his career
(Patch Adams comes to mind), but the transition he has made
from schmaltz to psycho is encouraging. His portrayal of Sy
as a faceless nobody who demands his own form of satisfaction
echoes the loneliness of so many solitary and delusional characters
from Willy Loman to Travis Bickel. He is believable, frightening,
and pitiful.
The notion
that the local photo developer has a power over, and distorted
insight into, the lives of his customers is nothing new. May
films have used similar occupations, whether they are photographer
or developer alike. In Manhunter and its upcoming remake Red
Dragon, the villain of the story is a killer who fixates upon
families in home movies that he develops at a photo lab. The
bridge between mere voyeurism and violent psychosis is a small
one. In One Hour Photo the line between customer service and
stalking was crossed long before the audience was let into
Sy's world. Yet there is something much more unsettling about
this film, which is presented more as a character study than
a procedural. There is a fearful intensity in viewing this
slice of life that cannot be easily matched by police work
and a race to catch a serial killer. The conventions of a
police procedural can be mapped out and predicted. Human behavior,
without the construct of plot dictations is not so etched
in stone. We know Sy intimately. We also know that there is
nothing there and that he is ready to explode. That no one
in the drama is aware of this is what is truly disturbing.
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