One Hour Photo
Encyclopedia : O : ON : ONE : 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. The movie 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.
Some critics said this movie did 'for photos what Psycho did for showers'.
Several elements in the film are borrowed from The Conversation, a 1974 film written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Plot
Sy Parrish, a photo tech at "SavMart", leads a depressing life alone. Daily, he labors to ensure the most perfect photos possible for his customers; his life is truly his work, for he has no-one and nothing to go home to at the end of the 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 spy on them and stalk them. Most of all, he fantasizes about being a member of their family, and of sharing in the love he assumes they must feel. He is painfully shy, however, and his attempts to become closer to their 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 but doesn't seem to care. Sy soon finds himself in trouble with his manager Bill Owens (Cole), for an outburst in the store and the manager's discovery that he has been printing copies of the Yorkins' photographs for himself. He stalks the manager's daughter, leading to a police report against him. While detectives (La Salle, Clark Gregg) are discovering his 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), and the viewer is left to wonder whether Sy actually made any pornographic pictures, or those pictures are merely shown as Sy's damaged mind perceives them.
Trivia
- 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 Sundance.
- Trent Reznor, of the band Nine Inch Nails, composed the original film score, but Mark Romanek opted not to use it. The music can still be heard on the Nine Inch Nails EP Still.
- "SavMart", the store where Sy works, appears to be a clone of Wal-mart. "Savmart" is a large store with white walls and blue lettering and carries everything, much like Wal-mart.
- The toy that Sy gets, as a present for Jake, is a character from Neon Genesis Evangelion (specifically, a Mass Production Evangelion, 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.
- Several filmgoers were confused by the nightmare scene. In the said scene, Sy sees himself 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. Some interpret this as a suicide nightmare, but 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 through voice over about the red-eye effect in humans.
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
See also
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.