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One Hour Photo
***1/2
Cinema Releases - October 4, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
98 minutes. Written and directed by Mark Romanek. Starring Robin Williams,
Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Dylan Smith, Eriq La Salle, Erin Daniels,
Paul H. Kim, Gary Cole.
Robin Williams has made a smart decision in his
current experimentation with villainous roles. He knows he's a funny guy,
that men with comic talent are usually a little unhinged, and that his status
as a beloved star means he can freak the audience out by pushing himself
over the edge. Hell, Williams looks creepy enough when in bad comedies. Don't
you think there's something unsavoury about "Toys" and "Patch
Adams"?
In "One Hour Photo", the actor plays
Sy Parrish, a tubby little man who goes around in a nerdy mackintosh jacket
and identical pairs of pale trousers. He has thinning blonde hair, which
looks not quite right. He wears the glasses of a man who has been updating
his prescription since childhood, and underneath them is the permanently
fixed but weak smile of someone who has devoted too much time and energy
to customer service.
He is Sy the Photo Guy, a man who works at the
print shop in the corner of a giant supermarket. He prides himself on having
calibrated "the best machine in the state", and tells us on the voice-over
that too many people in his line of work think producing cheap photographs
is an easy task. For Sy, it's an artform. The first time we see the smile
break, and the temperate part of Sy's personality come out, is when the repairman
refuses to correct the blue ink levels on the machine.
The addresses, faces and habits of all the regular
customers have been memorised. Sy cares about the insurance salesman who
comes in with pictures of car wrecks, about the amateur porn photographer
who always shuffles away from the counter real quick, and mostly about the
Yarris family, with their pretty faces, their beautiful house, their smiling
scenes.
"One Hour Photo" opens with Sy in a police interview
room; we're informed at the top that something is amiss, because the writer
and director, Mark Romanek, is not interested in pretending that we don't
know the movie is going to be a thriller. From step one we're pondering Sy's
potential oddness, and the movie becomes more uncomfortable as layers are
revealed.
Sy in fact cares too much about this Yarris family,
played by Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan and Dylan Smith as the kind of wife,
husband and child who may have problems, but on the surface appear to be
out of a catalogue. Sy parks outside their house one day, peering inside
with longing. One great shot lets us slowly realise that there are Yarris
pictures on the photo developer's own wall, in a collection towering so high
that we cannot help get chills.
That shot is key. It tells us that Sy has crossed
certain lines in his private space, that he does not recognise the legendary
freakiness of giant shrines. As "One Hour Photo" keeps revealing, and revealing,
and revealing, an extraordinary amount of tension is generated, simply by
virtue of the fact that something might happen. All of us know the
extreme paths the mind can travel when loneliness causes obsessive thinking.
Couple that with what know of Sy.
Romanek uses a lot of technique in the movie;
he's clearly been to Thriller 101. There are longshots with darkened edges,
helplessly distancing us and signalling danger. There are moments in which
the camera lingers on the empty spaces of rooms, or captures the senses of
certain atmospheric moments, like when the panels of lights first flicker
on in the cold vastness of the supermarket. There are dream and fantasy sequences
that do not seem to be, and occasional use of the photographic negative,
an image whose fright will never die.
The thing is, "One Hour Photo" still feels subtle.
The stylistic flourishes are there, but they're done quietly and slowly,
and besides, our attention is drawn to Williams. He's onscreen in almost
every scene, his odd new features and expressions inspiring deep, intense
gazing. Having seen "Insomnia", the idea of Williams as a psychopath is no
longer a gimmick; he gets our attention through a performance of disturbing
single-mindedness and internalisation. This is a fascinating and piercing
character study, unpredictable in small ways that are made to seem vitally
important.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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