"And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture."
I Have known about this movie for some time, but to be honest, I had no great urge to watch it. It seemed depressing, difficult, and buried in the wrong decade for a movie like this. Rayne was the one who made me pull the trigger and watch it with her, and thank god she did. This movie is fascinating.
One Hour Photo is a 2002 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Mark Romanek and starring Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole, and Eriq La Salle.
Sy Parrish runs a one-hour photo-developing lab in a small mall. He's a perfectionist about his work and generous to his regular customers, including a typical family headed by Will Yorkin. Over the years, he's seen their family grow through their photographs, but when he sees evidence of Yorkin being unfaithful, coupled with a threat to his position, his already precarious mental state tips over the edge.
When it comes to the question of what's your favourite movie, my answer is changed multiple times. For quite a while, I would have told you it was EX-MACHINA. I love that the entire movie is full of philosophical discussions, thought experiments, delicious tension, and a wonderful sense of the uncanny valley.
If you ask me that question a little earlier, I probably would have told you my favourite movie was AMERICAN PSYCHO. I love a good movie that puts you in the POV of a crazy person (any degree of crazy will do just fine, thank you) whose thought patterns are so far outside of your own that you almost feel like a detective trying to figure out his motivation. I'm by no means saying that 1 HOUR PHOTO is my new favourite movie, but it has all those same elements that make my favourite movies my favourite movies.
MOSQUITO STATE, Elijah Woods's MANIAC remake, WILLARD 2004, SAINT MAUDE, NEW YEARS EVIL, all of these movies sort of fall into the same category as this one. But that being said, I don't think I've ever seen a movie that gives you so little information going in. Because of that, I understand why some people found this movie a little tedious, but it's exactly why I loved this movie so much.
Coming from a director who has almost exclusively worked on music videos is definitely part of the reason this movie works so well. It has no need for garish action scenes or a big sweeping orchestral soundtrack to hit its emotional beats and instead chooses to linger in all the uncomfortable moments it possibly can. You know, the kind of moments no one would ever want to take a picture of.
For the first half of the movie, I really had a hard time figuring out what it was about the Yorkin family that had caused Sy to become so obsessed with them in the first place. At first, I figured it was simply their son Jake, and that Sai was using both him and his family to create a sort of do-over childhood for himself. Simple escapism, easy peasy. Case closed.
As the movie goes on, It becomes more and more clear that Jake really isn't the center of his obsession at all, it's their family unit as a whole. The Yorkin family photos are the only real colour in both his home and his life, and as soon as Mr. Yorkin threatens this idealized to be perfect family unit, he starts getting scared and desperate.
He starts to see William turning into his own father, The kind of father who forces children to do things no child should ever do. He starts to see his life, his job, and even the family He's so kindly inserted himself in start to fall apart. He starts to see that the black and white Madonna/whore boxes he has been putting people into all of his life don't hold true.
His sense of control, his sense of family, and his sense of purpose are all stripped away. He's as sympathetic as he is creepy, He's the pilot of a crashing plane trying to tell everyone as calmly as he can to fasten their seat belts.
He's easily one of the most interesting film characters I've ever seen, and this is definitely one of those movies that I'll be revisiting time and time again.
Thank God my baby showed me this one, and hopefully if you haven't seen it already you might just give it a shot.
10/10
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