Photo obsession

A haunting performance from Robin Williams at his best.

Seymour is a lonely nondescript man who lives by himself and works in the photo developing lab in a large mall. The only bit of cheer in his day is to develop very good photos in his lab, and he takes great pride in his work. His favourite customers are the Yorkin's, who have a son and regularly develop pictures. Seymour's like for this family goes beyond `like' and he feels part of their family and has all their pictures on his wall. However when both his job and the unity of his family are threatened he reacts.

I saw this film in a free preview screening before it came out so I had no reviews to cloud me first. Happily most of them appear to feel the same as I did. In terms of plot this set up will be no surprise to anyone – we've all seen Single White Female and Pacific Heights etc, we know what happens that leads to the old bunny boiling etc.

However One Hour Photo is different enough to justify watching. My wife complained that it was too slow and boring but I felt this approach helped it stand out. Instead of being a thriller it was more of a cold slow boiler than was more chilling than thrilling. The plot is well laid out – even the money shot of all the pictures on the wall is played out while we're distracted by a joke from the Simpsons on TV. The director's cold approach to story telling works very well and highlights Seymour's grey existence and cold life. Only occasionally does he go astray – the fantasy sequences don't always work for instance but for almost the whole film he does very well.

Towards the end Seymour's behaviour goes erratic as we expect and I was worried that the film had eventually given way to cliché. Happily this is not the case. Yes, Seymour's change is a bit of a leap at first but the film cleverly pulls it back at the end. This makes it above the rest of this genre by a good head and shoulders. Clever touches abound in the film but don't always work. For example the director shows us that it is all about seeing by covering Seymour's eyes with objects in some shots to show he has lost his ability to watch, while the name Yorkin is a slight play on `Your Kin' or your family. These are clever but don't add very much – the eye theme felt a bit too clever and intrusive.

Williams is excellent. Having paid to see him mush around in Patch Adams I was worried here that eventually his emotions would run away with him. However Williams (and here's something you'd won't hear much) keeps it all in check and underplays wonderfully. His Seymour is likeable, sad, pathetic and chilling all at once. It's hard not to feel for him and he is better for being low-key. I truly felt Williams had turned himself into a `little' man – one of those people who you barely notice on the streets as they make no lasting image. Vartan (Alias) is good as Will and Nielsen is also good as Nina. They are also given firm support in the shape of Gary Cole and La Salle. However his is Williams show and, by underplaying, he steals it easily.

Overall this has it's flaws but it is head and shoulders above the rest of this stalker genre. Directed with a clinic eye rather than a thrilling eye this is clever and different enough to more than justify checking it out.

A realistic portrayal of loneliness and the effect it can have on a person. Robin Williams is outstanding here and carrys the film. An expertly crafted drama that will send shivers down your spine.

Robin Williams, one of the funniest people on the planet, has made a career of playing some very unpleasant people. In this one, he works at a Fotomat (now nearly extinct) and become the stalker of a family that brings their films to him for development. Not only does he stalk them, he knows everything about them, their birthday parties, their fights, their sporting events, etc. Of course, at some point he is going to inject himself into their lives. Fortunately, the scrip writers used some restraint and made this play out the way it should have (I won't' spoil this for you). Suffice it to say that the trip is a scary one and we can't help but feel our flesh creep a bit. We also are made aware of his loneliness and his dysfunctional existence. He is a multidimensional figure, as quirky as one can get. After seeing "The Social Network" recently, I have to also say that we have created a societal voyeurism in our culture. This further shows how fragile our privacy is and how we are willing to sell it to the highest bidder.

Robin Williams gives what may well be the performance of his career in `One Hour Photo,' a creepy psychological thriller written and directed with cool precision by Mark Romanek. Given its premise, the film could easily have degenerated into a sordid, exploitative tale of obsession and madness. Instead, Romanek has chosen to take a more subtle approach, fashioning a film that downplays the potential violence of its material while, at the same time, recognizing the humanity of its central figure.

Romanek understands that the greatest threats to our safety and lives often come from the gray, nondescript people who surround us unnoticed, the `nobodies' whose benign faces and vacuous smiles reveal no trace of the insanity, evil and potential for doing us harm that may be lurking right there under the surface. And nobody is `grayer' than Si Parrish, an innocuous, socially undeveloped milquetoast who spends his days working as a photo developer in one of those sterile five-and-dime drug stores (just like the one in `The Good Girl') - and his nights sitting all alone in his drab apartment brooding over a massive family-photo shrine he has erected to the Yorkins, a seemingly happy family of three whose pictures Si has been developing, copying and obsessing over for more than seven years now. The film centers around Si's growing fixation with this one family and his delusional belief that he too could somehow become an integral part of their family unit. Then comes the day when Si realizes that he is no longer content to be a mere vicarious member of this adopted family and, thus, begins his plan to gradually insinuate himself more and more directly into their lives.

As both writer and director, Romanek manages to keep us in a state of vague uneasiness throughout. We are always anticipating some potentially dreadful event, yet Romanek doesn't go for the easy thrill or the obvious plot turn. Thanks to Williams' subtle, incisive performance, we come to understand something of what makes this strange character tick. We begin to sense the deep-seated loneliness and social awkwardness that have come to play such an important part in defining both his behavior and his character. Si is scary, but he is also pathetic. He may have slipped over the edge into madness, but it is a pathology rooted in overwhelming loneliness and the inability to `fit in' to the societal `norm' of marriage and family. Even when his character is at his most threatening and irrational, Williams somehow makes us care about him.

Romanek hits upon a few ancillary themes as well. He acknowledges how photos create the appearance of a life without necessarily reflecting the reality of that life. Most people, Si confesses, record only the `special, happy' moments of their lives – birthdays, weddings, holidays etc. and leave out the mundane or painful ones. Moreover, Si tells us that people use pictures as a way of defeating aging and time, of saying to the world of the future that `I', this seemingly insignificant person, was really here, being happy and enjoying life. To match this theme, Romanek's visual style often feels like the director's own personal homage to The Photograph, as the camera scans caressingly across a sea of snapshots – and Si's voiceover narration complements that feeling.

`One Hour Photo' is not a film for those who like their chills heavily laced with bloodshed, murder and mayhem. It is, rather, for those who can appreciate a quietly unsettling, yet strangely compassionate glimpse into the dark recesses of the troubled mind.