Music video veteran Mark Romanek’s feature debut One Hour Photo is mostly remembered now for Robin Williams’s conversation-piece performance, but that is only one aspect of a quietly remarkable movie that delivers something subtly different from the slightly middle-of-the-road potboiler that it promises on paper. It also has, in the two decades since its release, become something of a period piece; even the title requires a little explanation for those born since 2002.
The plot is simple; Sy Parrish (Robin Williams), a quiet, lonely man who works in the photo processing section of an anonymous Walmart-style store, becomes obsessed with a family whose lives he had been watching for years via the photographs they bring in for him to develop. The obsession deepens as Sy becomes ever more isolated, and when he discovers that family is threatened by infidelity, that obsession spills over into real life with dramatic consequences. At the opening of the movie, we first meet Sy in police custody for an undisclosed crime, and the tension escalates as the story unfolds in flashback with occasional voiceovers that give us an insight into Parrish’s thoughts and motivation.
Although Robin Williams is the star – and several of his co-stars also give excellent performances – director Mark Romanek, cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and production designer Tom Foden are together responsible for much of the restrained and oddly antiseptic calm that makes the film so effective. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about Williams is the extent to which he doesn’t give the villainous performance that much of the movie’s publicity seemed to suggest. Instead, he tones down the natural ebullience and emotionalism that marked both his comedic and dramatic performances for something uncharacteristically quiet and enclosed, at least for as long as the movie lets him. Although he played a few vaguely similar parts in his career, Williams gives a performance here that has less in common with the killer Walter Finch in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia the same year than it does with Tommy Wilhelm in the 1986 adaptation of Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day. Parrish is a far less sympathetic character, but like Wilhelm he has become almost an invisible presence even within his own life, although in Parrish’s case his unobtrusiveness is, we eventually infer, deliberate.
The script highlights Sy’s marginal existence through his interactions with others, especially his friendly but hardly intimate relationship with Nina Yorkin (Connie Nielsen) and her son Jakob (Dylan Smith,) but the direction and cinematography does it even more effectively. Whether at work in the vast, sterile SavMart or at home in his equally spotless apartment, Parrish virtually blends with his surroundings, his clothes a symphony of pale neutral colors, matched by his sallow skin and cropped blonde hair. The only real color accent in his apartment is a wall covered with photographs – extra prints he has taken when developing the Yorkin family’s snaps.
The first reveal of the photo wall is probably the film’s most chilling moment, and although the development feels melodramatic – and its third act to some extent unfolds in that overfamiliar Fatal Attraction kind of way – the atmosphere of alienation and unease is built subtly and effectively throughout the first half of the movie. Sy is obsessed with the Yorkin family, but for a long time the viewer is left to guess at the nature of his obsession and the film surprised audiences by not making him the predatory child molester that his overt interest in Jakob might suggest. In fact, it seems that the apparently idyllic nature of the Yorkin family’s life, as recorded in photos of birthdays, parties and vacations – is ultimately what is most important to him. When he fantasizes about the family, it’s with himself installed as a loveable, harmless uncle figure. Jakob senses Sy’s loneliness, but although he and his parents have sympathy for his friendless plight, they dismiss him as an essentially comic, if benign character, “Sy the Photo Guy.”
When we see the Yorkin family at home, it becomes clear that their life is not quite the idyll that Parrish is obsessed with. Relations between Connie and her husband Will (Michael Vartan) are strained, apparently because of his absorption in his work, although we quickly find that in fact, he’s having an affair. When Sy discovers the affair – Will’s girlfriend brings in photographs to be developed – he decides to take action, first by sneaking one of the photos into the Yorkin family pictures and spying on Nina to see her reaction. She is clearly shocked, but when it becomes clear that she isn’t about to confront Will, Parrish follows him and his girlfriend, finally accosting them in a hotel room where, armed with a knife, he makes them pose for obscene photographs before being captured by the police.
The scene in the hotel room is the dramatic crescendo, and despite slightly implausible inaction from Sy’s hostages — even with a knife he is not an especially impressive figure – it’s extremely well-handled, never edging into the expected bloody, horror movie territory. But scenes afterwards with Parrish in police custody to some extent undermine the carefully created atmosphere and tension that had been so skillfully built, by rationalizing his actions via a hinted-at history of abuse and neglect. Williams had already suggested that background so well with his enclosed performance up to that point that saying it out loud feels unnecessary and a little crass.
Still, the denouement is nevertheless pleasingly restrained – One Hour Photo made a decade earlier or by a Joel Schumacher or Tony Scott type of director would have climaxed in a bloodbath and an expected-unexpected twist ending. As well as looking great, the film features several excellent performances; Connie Nielsen hits the exact right note of cordial but qualified concern for someone she barely knows. Gary Cole, as Parrish’s exasperated boss, in a way gives his usual performance, but transcends his usual film and TV persona for something far more nuanced and believable; finally, Eriq La Salle brings a quiet authority to Detective James Van Der Zee that fits the film like a glove.
At the time, One Hour Photo was just one of many solid, if not exactly inspired, high profile thrillers that ranged from the frivolous Catch Me if You Can to the gritty Panic Room and the silly The Mothman Prophecies and it was Robin Williams that captured the public imagination. In 2002, despite his varied filmography, his career was mostly defined by various shades of heart-warming, so it’s no surprise that the enclosed, distant, pitiable but never quite likeable Sy Parrish struck a chord. It’s not his most disturbing performance – that will forever be Popeye – but the way he toned down his innate Robin Williams-ness to reinforce and enhance Mark Romanek’s distinctive vision makes One Hour Photo a movie that easily transcends the slightly threadbare nature of its plot.
Twenty years on, the concept of waiting an hour for photographs seems quaint, but Mark Romanek’s visual flair, and a strong Robin Williams performance make One Hour Photo a satisfying little thriller
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