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One Hour Photo (Widescreen Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 26 August, 2003 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (12 total) |
One Hour Photo (Widescreen Edition) Reviews
And who could that be stalking us now?
Along with the nanny, the stepdad, the cable guy, the 14-year-old girl with a crush... we now have the PHOTO PROCESSING CLERK to fear! Yes, everyone is out to get us.. or at least that's what Hollywood would have us believe.
I am getting sick of films like this that constantly contort normal healthy human interaction and community relations into perverse horrors that are far from reality. No wonder we live in a culture of such exagerrated suspicion, mistrust, fear (and the resulting isolation) when we have films like this constantly stoking these fears of people around us.
Yes, films like these have their place. However, I think Hollywood has taken it a bit too far and needs to pull itself back into reality.
Quietly teetering on the brink
Robin Williams plays Seymour "Sy" Parrish, a soft-spoken, meek, lonely, photograph-developing technician who has worked at a "SavMart" store for many years and takes great pride in his work. Sy doesn't have much of a life, outside of work; he has no friends or family, and eats his meals at a local diner. But, he loves photographs. Over the years, he has followed the progress of a local family, the Yorkins, through all of the pictures they bring to him to develop, and Sy has a growing fantasy about becoming a member of that seemingly idyllic family. The fantasy grows to obsession, and Sy makes an extra copy of all of their pictures, to take home to his tiny apartment, to cover one entire wall.
But, then things start to go very wrong. Sy gets caught making extra copies (the machine's counter-logs do not match), plus Sy discovers a flaw in the Yorkin family. With his fantasy and his job slipping away from him, Sy becomes quite unstable, and takes very desperate actions to try to make things right again.
This is a very creepy movie. In the same way that "Fargo" portrayed a seemingly-ordinary person with enormous problems just beneath the surface, "One Hour Photo" makes the viewer wonder what insanity he or she has stared in the face, perhaps repeatedly, without ever being able to see it. Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" also showed us how true horror does not have to come from monsters, but can be in the shape of sparrows, gulls, and crows. Other films have tried to portray this, but done it poorly. The babysitter-who-is-really-a-serial-killer has become a cliche, and never seems believable. In "One Hour Photo," we see a truly believable character, who drifts toward doing truly horrific acts, for reasons that are simultaneously irrational and understandable.
Robin Williams is astounding in this role. We saw him do dramatic parts in "What Dreams May Come" and "Dead Poets Society," but "One Hour Photo" is an Oscar-worthy performance. In the first scene, I actually thought, "Is that Robin Williams?" He is the epitome of nondescript, bland, inoffensive, innocuous, and non-threatening. He is not just ordinary; he blends into the wallpaper. The cinematography, clothing, and set design all enhance this effect. In one of the DVD special features, you get to see him rapidly and abruptly switch back and forth between Robin the Irrepressible and Sy the Invisible. Truly amazing.
As you might surmise, I highly recommend this one. Wow.
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