2002
Written and Directed by: Mark Romanek

Starring:
Robin Williams - Seymour Parrish
Connie Nielsen - Nina Yorkin
Michael Vartan - William Yorkin
Dylan Smith - Jakob Yorkin
Erin Daniels - Maya Burson

Seymour "Sy" Parrish works in the photo shop at SavMart. He takes his work seriously because he thinks family snapshots are very important — "When people's houses are on fire," Sy says in the voice-over narration, "what's the first thing they save once their pets and loved ones are safe? The family photos." Later, he says of photographs, "And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here; I existed; I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture." As well as taking his work seriously, he refers to SavMart's customers as "my customers," and treats them with courtesy and respect.

Sy is very fond of a couple customers in particular — Nina Yorkin and her nine-year-old son Jakob — whose family photos he develops with a kind of reverance. He makes a second set of prints of the Yorkins' pictures for himself. He smiles warmly as he looks through the snapshots of young Jake's birthday party over dinner in a coffee shop he frequents. It quickly becomes apparent that Sy's affection for the Yorkins goes beyond the casual, and that his life is barren. Sometimes he sits in his car across from the Yorkins' house and daydreams about being "Uncle Sy." He yearns to be a part of their family, to be not only accepted by them, but needed as well.

But the Yorkins are not the perfect happy family Sy imagines them to be. There is discord behind the closed doors of the Yorkin house. When Sy discovers that Nina's husband William has a secret, he injects himself into their lives in a way that is unexpected and frightening.

As Sy, Robin Williams gives a performance so quiet and understated that it's sometimes hard to believe it's Robin Williams, that guy who goes nuts during TV talkshow appearances, talks a mile a minute, and cracks everybody up. Here, he's quiet, a little stiff, always seeming to hold back. We aren't sure exactly what he's holding back until he gets into an argument with a repairman at work — as angry as he gets, we sense it's only a small serving of what he's got locked up inside, a lot more than mere anger. He often seems to be cringing, as if he's afraid some of it will get out. Williams's Sy is not an evil man — he's not Francis Dolarhyde, the photo-developing serial killer from Red Dragon. He is a lonely, damaged man, and deeply disturbed. His affection for the Yorkins is genuine, it just happens to be very unhealthy. Instead of finding someone with whom to start a family of his own, Sy has chosen instead to lurk in the shadows and create an imaginary relationship with a family that knows him only as "Sy the Photo Guy." He has spent so much time in the fantasy he has created that his real life has become nothing more than a series of irritating distractions. Williams's performance is so vivid that it was easy to forget I was watching Robin Williams — it doesn't get any better than that.

Director Mark Romanek's script is clever without being tricky. He could have taken the point of view of the Yorkins and made a more conventional, and probably more commercial, suspense movie. Instead, he goes with Sy's point of view and gives us a movie that's just as much a character study as it is a thriller. At times, we become so involved with Sy's life, so sympathetic to his pain, that we forget he's an unstable and possibly dangerous man. But Romanek doesn't let us forget for long. When Sy finally releases the rage and pain we've suspected he's been harboring all along — watch Williams's face, they're both there, duking it out — we believe it, and it's frightening. Unlike so many conventional thrillers, One Hour Photo does not play to the stupidest person in the room. It's intelligent, the tension builds naturally and steadily, and the climax is suspenseful and satisfying — it's even plausible, which is something that's become too rare in thrillers these days.

Although it's clear that the Yorkins are not the storybook family Sy imagines them to be through most of the movie, they aren't a very convincing troubled family, either. There is an artificiality to the scenes in which the Yorkins interact with each other in their home — I didn't believe them for a moment. A tense discussion between Nina and William about money sounds like dialogue straight off a daytime soap opera. The movie seems to deflate a little when it spends time with them. Fortunately, the focus is on Sy.

He is socially awkward and there are moments when I found myself squirming in my seat with embarassment for him. He's the kind of person who goes mostly unnoticed in life, who blends in with the background — and in some scenes, thanks to the fine work of production designer Tom Foden and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, Sy quite literally blends in with the background, like a chameleon.

One Hour Photo is a very quiet film. While there's nothing wrong with Sy's narration, the movie would have worked just as well without it, which would have made it even quieter. The script uses dialogue economically and we get to know Sy visually. In a scene in which we learn the enormous depth of Sy's obsession with the Yorkins, the only dialogue comes from The Simpsons on television.

While One Hour Photo is not a horror movie, it's not a straight thriller, either. It swings from creepy to scary to heartbreaking and back again without effort. It does what Hitchcock used to enjoy doing in his films, something that's difficult to do successfully — it makes us sympathize with, and even care about, someone who, in life, we would shun. That's a sign of a gifted director, and Mark Romanek is one worth watching.

[Out of a possible four Bloodshot Eyeballs.]