One Hour Photo

“One Hour Photo,” released in 2002, tells the story of Seymour “Sy” Parrish, who works behind the photo counter of one of those large suburban shopping strips. He has a plain, unknown face, and a positive voice that almost hides his anxiety and loneliness. He takes your film, develops it, and has your photos ready in an hour. Sometimes he even gives you 5-by-7s when you actually ordered 4-by-6s. His favorite customers are the Yorkins – Nina, Will and their son Jake. They’ve been regular customers for years. When they bring in their film, he makes an extra set of prints – for himself.

Sy follows a regular routine. There is a diner where he eats, alone, carefully. He is an “ideal employee.” He has no friends, a co-worker examines. However, the Yorkins treat him as a substitute member, and he is their so-called Uncle Sy. Only once in a while does everyone see a part of the dark side of himself, like when he gets into a fight with Larry, the photo machine repairman.

The Yorkins know him by name, and are a little humored by his devotion. There is a part of need to his moments with them. If they were to decide to stop film and get one of those new digital cameras, a careful sense might make them hide this fact from Sy. The late Robin Williams plays Sy, another of his open-faced, smiling maniacs, like the villain in “Insomnia.” He does this so well that it doesn’t take long in accepting him in the role. Roger Ebert credited in his review, “The first time we see Sy behind his counter, neat, smiling, with a few extra pounds from the diner routine, we buy him. He belongs there. He's native to retail.”

Ebert continued, “The Yorkin family is at first depicted as ideal: models for an ad for their suburban lifestyle. Nina Yorkin (Connie Nielsen), pretty and fresh-scrubbed, has a cheery public persona. Will (Michael Vartan) is your regular clean-cut guy. Young Jake (Dylan Smith) is cute as a picture. Mark Romanek, who wrote and directed the film, is sneaky in the way he so subtly introduces discordant elements into his perfect picture. A tone of voice, a half-glimpsed book cover, a mistaken order, a casual aside ... they don't mean much by themselves, but they add up to an ominous cloud, gathering over the photo counter.”

A good amount of the film’s atmosphere is made through the cinematography, by Jeff Cronenweth. His insides at “Savmart” are white and bright, almost aggressive. You can hear the fluorescent lights buzzing. Through decisions with the set design and lens choices, the One Hour Photo counter somehow looks like an unnatural distance from the other places of the store, as if the store avoids it, or it has reserved into itself. Customers walk from across an open amount of emptiness, with Sy smiling at the counter.

A man who works in a one-hour photo lab might look to be completely weak. That’s what Sy’s boss, played by Gary Cole, thinks. However, at a time when naked baby pictures could be seen as child abuse, the man with the ability to see your photos can cause you a lot of trouble. For instance, what would happen if Will Yorkin is having an affair, and his mistress, played by Erin Daniels, brings in photos to be developed, and Uncle Sy “mistakenly” gives them to Nina Yorkin? The movie initially looks completely grounded in normal reality, in the schedule of a predictable job. When Romanek moves away from reality, he does it faintly, sneakily, so that we believe what we see until he reveals it. Ebert said, “. There is one moment I will not describe (in order not to ruin it) when Sy commits a kind of social trespass that has the audience stirring with quiet surprise: Surprise, because until they see the scene they don't realize that his innocent, everyday act can be a shocking transgression in the wrong context.”

Ebert continued, “Watching the film, I thought of Michael Powell's great 1960 British thriller "Peeping Tom," which was about a photographer who killed his victims with a stiletto concealed in his camera. Sy uses a psychological stiletto, but he's the same kind of character, the sort of man you don't much notice, who blends in, accepted, overlooked, left alone so that his rich secret life can flower. There is a moment in "Peeping Tom" when a shot suddenly reveals the full depth of the character's depravity.” In “One Hour Photo,” a look with a similar reason needs only a lot of innocent family photos, shown in a way that is greatly scary.

The movie has also been compared to “American Beauty,” another film where anger, loneliness and desire worsen under the surface of suburban wealth. Ebert said, “The difference, I think, is that the needs of the Kevin Spacey character in "American Beauty," while frowned upon and even illegal, fall generally within the range of emotions we understand.” Sy Parrish is outside that range. He was born with stuff missing, and has gathered the leftovers in a person who has borrowed from the inside to make the outside look fine.

I think my cousin had told me about this movie and I thought it was another one of Williams’ roles where he played a creepy villain. However, after seeing the movie and knowing the man’s intentions, I actually felt sorry for him the whole time watching this. One of my late best friends said that this movie inspired him to quit the CVS photo lab he was working in and go back to school. With all of that said, I seriously think everyone should watch this, especially if you’re a Williams fan. This was one of his best roles and I think you will understand the character’s intentions the further you watch the film.

Look out on Monday to see what I have in store for everyone in the next review of this year’s “Halloween Month.”