One Hour Photo

One Hour Photo (2002) is an American psychological thriller, written and directed by Mark Romanek and starring Robin Williams. Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed the movie in the United States, and it also starred Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole, and Eriq La Salle. Williams won a Saturn Award for Best Actor (2003) for his work in the film.

Plot

Sy Parrish, a photo tech at "SavMart", leads a depressing life alone. Daily, he labors to ensure his customers get the most perfect photos possible; his life is truly his work, for he has no-one and nothing to go home to, at the end of each day. Among his customers are the Yorkin family, made up of husband William (Vartan), wife Nina (Nielsen), and their only child Jake (Dylan Smith). Sy has done their photos for years, and over time, has developed an obsession with the family; he admires their happiness and wealth, memorizes every personal detail about them that he can learn, and finally begins to stalk them. Most of all, he fantasizes about being a member of their family, and sharing in the love he assumes they must feel. However, he is painfully shy, and his attempts to become closer to the family are gently rebuffed.

Sy discovers that William is having an affair, and his rosy conception of the Yorkins as the 'perfect' loving family is shattered. He comes to hate and envy William, who has everything Sy longs for, yet doesn't seem to care. Sy soon finds himself in trouble with his manager Bill Owens (Cole), first for an outburst in the store, and then for the manager's discovery that Sy has been making unaccounted for photo copies. He stalks the manager's daughter, leading to a police report against him. While detectives (played by La Salle and Clark Gregg) are discovering Sy's obsession, he confronts William and his mistress in their hotel room, with a knife and a camera, and forces them to make pornographic poses. As he tries to leave the hotel, he is arrested.

In the movie's final scene, set in a police interrogation room, a detective (La Salle) asks Sy why he terrorized the Yorkins. Sy indirectly reveals that his father had made him do 'sick, disgusting things that no kid should ever have to do'. The implication, confirmed by Romanek, is that Sy's father exploited him for child pornography, and this accounts for his loneliness, and his obsession with photography. Sy cannot understand why William, as the perfect father, was determined to destroy his family. As the detective prepares to take his confession, Sy asks for the pictures he made at the hotel, which the detective has described as 'evidence'. They appear to be only shots of household objects and interior furnishings (possibly an allusion to his statement, earlier in the film, that 'the little things are that which make up our lives').

The viewer is left to wonder whether Sy actually made any pornographic pictures, or whether those pictures are merely shown as Sy's damaged mind perceives them.

Release and reaction

One Hour Photo opened to mostly very positive reviews, earning raves from Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and other noted critics.

The movie's limited release began on August 21, 2002 in 7 theaters, opening to an impresive $321,515 weekend, with an average of $45,930 per theater. Its wide release began the next month on September 13, with a rather low 1,212 theater count. Still, the film made just over $8 million that weekend, and went on to gross $31,597,131, followed by an additional $20,626,175 in overseas territories, for an international total of $52,223,306; not a blockbuster by any means, but certainly a success, considering its small $12 million budget.

Robin Williams was the recipient of a Saturn Award for his portrayal of Sy.

Trivia

• In the film Sy's last name is Parrish, which was also the last name of Williams' character in Jumanji
• Originally, the director intended the film to be much longer, but the studio ordered it to be cut shorter, and elements rearranged out of concerns about commerciality. The beginning, for example, was moved to the end. A director's cut is not available to buy, but was shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
• SavMart is a play on Wal-Mart.
• The camera that Sy uses is a Minolta Freedom Zoom 150 35mm film camera.
• Trent Reznor, of the band Nine Inch Nails, composed the original film score, but Romanek opted not to use it. The music can still be heard on the Nine Inch Nails EP Still [1].
• The toy that Sy gets, as a present for Jake, is a character from Neon Genesis Evangelion (specifically, a Mass Production Evangelion From The End Of Evangelion Movie, which Jake incorrectly describes as one of the 'good guys'). Williams is a huge fan of the series, and the figure is from his personal collection.
• In accordance with photography being the theme of the movie, many of the characters in the movie take their names from photographers. Examples include: Sy's assistant at the Savmart, Yoshi Araki (named for Nobuyoshi Araki); Det. Van Der Zee (James Van Der Zee), Maya Burson (Nancy Burson); and Savmart customers Mrs. von Unwerth (Ellen von Unwerth) and Mr. Siskind (Aaron Siskind). In addition, the hotel at the end of the movie, the Edgerton, is also named for a noted photographer — Harold Eugene Edgerton.
• At the end of the scene where the Yorkins view the photo from Jake's birthday party, Will tosses Sy's picture onto a table littered with Chinese food. The fortune cookie that the photo lands next to, reads 'Someone wants you to be happy'. Romanek searched through various fortune cookies before he came across one relevant to the film.
• In one scene, Sy dreams that he is standing in a white corridor lined with shelves, with his eyes closed. As the camera zooms in, he opens his eyes, which appear to be blood red. He then screams and his eyes begin to spurt out blood. No official interpretation has been revealed, although it is related to a scene that was removed from the final cut of the film in which Sy explains (in a voice over) the red-eye effect.
• Throughout the film there is a continuous presence of Photoframes. The first one is the panning of the camera into the question room; this is why the breaking of the window on Sy's car is unexplained, because it creates a frame for Sy to be contained within.
• In commentary, Romanek has gone on to state that he was partially inspired by the films of 'lonely men' from the 1970s, notably Taxi Driver.
• Gary Cole's character, Bill Owens, is the store manager in the film. Cole also played a middle manager named Bill Lumbergh in the film Office Space.

Major cast

• Robin Williams — Seymour 'Sy' Parrish
• Connie Nielsen — Nina Yorkin
• Michael Vartan — Will Yorkin
• Dylan Smith — Jake Yorkin
• Gary Cole — Bill Owens
• Eriq La Salle — Detective James Van Der Zee
• Clark Gregg — Detective Paul Outerbridge
• Erin Daniels — Maya Burson

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