One Hour Photo

• Written and Directed by Mark Romanek
• January 13, 2002 (Sundance) / August 21, 2002 (US)

A photo technician develops a dangerous obsession with a family that have been long time customers.

Once upon a time cameras contained film that you might mail away to be developed or simply drop off somewhere to get back a short time later making the film One Hour Photo a movie you truly could not make today. In the age of digital such places have been replaced by home printers or small kiosks. The main ingredient no longer exists!

Robin Williams was famously cast against type as lonely SavMart photo tech Seymour ‘Sy’ Parrish who over the years has become attached to the Yorkin Family whom he knows more through their pictures than from a genuine relationship. On the surface Sy is pleasant and kind but that surface hides a man with serious personal issues. After ten or so years of regularly handling the pictures of Yorkins’ pictures he has become obsessed with the idyllic life portrayed in their photographs.

One Hour Photo takes its time as we get to know Sy along with Will and Nina (Michael Vartan and Connie Nielsen) Yorkin and their son Jake (Dylan Smith). We the viewer see the cracks in the marriage while Sy is tricked by the outward appearance. Sy is a bit of a narrator with the story being a flashback. He understands that photographs are often pleasant memories or what we wish the world to see but does not quite get that himself. He has a philosophy built around photography yet fails to completely understand that philosophy.

Sy is unsettling because we have all met/dealt with someone that is a lot like Sy appears. Nice-even friendly-yet maybe even a bit lonely looking. Beneath it all Sy is craving connection of some sort deprived from him his whole life which has caused a fantasy to be created in his mind that when broken makes him a bit dangerous.

I found myself feeling a bit sorry for Sy “The Photo Guy” by the end. Throughout the movie it is clear he has no one with even his coworkers at a bit of a distance. The only relationship he looks to have beyond work is with a waitress at a place he frequents where he presents his fantasy as truth. His fiction is not one of attraction to the wife but being part of a seemingly perfect family. There is even a fantasy sequences that not only includes Sy on a toilet (weirdest shot in the whole movie) but ends with the family finding him inside and calling him ‘Uncle Sy.’

This is a very hard movie to watch. It looks at the destructive nature of loneliness with a very unsettling performance by Williams. Sy is equal parts broken and dangerous once his fantasy is shattered and world starts falling apart because of his unhealthy obsession. Watching him evolve into something dangerous as his mentality breaks is great thriller material.

I felt genuine anxiety watching Photo. It is filled with authentic performances like you are there watching events happen which generated those feelings. Nothing is outlandishly stylized beyond the occasional hallucination or dream which is expected. The sets are very sterile. Just the minimum to communicate an apartment (with a wall covered in Yorkin family pictures) or the store or restaurant. Everything is cold and lonely when Sy is present in contrast to the times when we see others beyond his limited world.

It is all helped by the absence of Williams’ trademark manic nature. You get the sense Sy is always holding himself back. Not to prevent violence but to keep from being overwhelmed by his feelings. There is a desperation to be a part of something in his performance.

The film is riveting even when not much happens like the scenes between Sy and store manager Bill Owens (Gary Cole). The hotel scene when Sy torments Will and his mistress Maya (Erin Daniels) with the reveal of the reality of those pictures being a shock. And maybe that DOES show Sy finally at least understands the part of his philosophy that says “Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.”

I highly recommend One Hour Photo, but I also recommend it with the word of caution. It’s a hard movie to watch. Riveting viewing but proceed with caution.