Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 6-April-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

One Hour Photo (2002)

Americans in general (and Hollywood in particular) seem to be very ambivalent about success and all its trappings --- the big house, fancy car, perfect marriage, 2.5 kids, sculpted bod, fabulous career, etc. On the one hand, it's very common to see these things mocked in movies and TV, but on the other hand it's just as common to see them held up (in ads, mostly) as what we're all supposed to be working towards. It may sound contradictory, but it's perfectly normal for human beings to both revere and despise the same thing. This may explain why everybody professes to be horrified by SUVs, and yet they sell like hotcakes; it's certainly why shows like "The Bachelor" exist, in which there's a twofold temptation of seeing beautiful people humiliated and witnessing a one-in-a-million instance of those same people finding Happily Ever After. What's really interesting is that either case satisfies because it feels like a sort ofjustice: if the beautiful people get shot down, it's because they're shallow; if they find true love, it's because good things actually happen to real people (and can therefore happen to any one of us).

Rarely has a movie been so indicative of this ambivalence toward success, American style, as "One Hour Photo," a deliberately stark rethinking of films like "Fatal Attraction" in which a perfect couple is imperiled by an unstable person who unwittingly doles out what feels like retribution. Robin Williams stars as Sy Parrish, a lonely photo processor working in a discount store who has become obsessed with a family through developing their pictures. Will and Nina Yorkin (Michael Vartan and Connie Nielsen) are a blessed young couple out of the pages of a J. Crew catalog with a spectacular house and an adorable son (Dylan Smith), and Sy sees in them the dreamy realization of marital bliss, fulfilled promise, and a life made up of happy, memorable times. His obsession is decidedly creepy (and we know from the opening scene that he has been picked up by the Threat Management Unit), but its source and intentions are hidden until Sy discovers a worm in the apple of his fantasy and decides that something must be done about it.

"One Hour Photo" plays out like a psychological thriller with the potential for horror until the very end, when it shies away from its hinted-at tragedy and settles instead for an acquittal of Sy and a suggested indictment of the Yorkins and what they represent. The movie unfolds largely from Sy's point of view, which is distinguished by stark monochromatic colors that enhance the cold, impersonal environment in which he lives. Not only does the visual harshness of Sy's world put you on edge, but so does the casting of Williams, who conveys the tension of a ticking time bomb no matter what movie he's in (despite all the praise he received for taking this "atypical" role, it's really just his tight-lipped presence here that works). The film intentionally keeps the Yorkins at a glossy distance with Sy in the foreground; while he is watching them with adoration, you are watching both him and them with mixed feelings. Sy is both pitiable and repulsive (he has no family or friends, but you can see why); the Yorkins are both enviable and detestable (they're gorgeous, but Will is smug and Nina is cloying, especially since Connie Nielsen "acts" only by fluttering her eyelids). No one is really evil and no one is really good, and as the movie goes on it appears to be less about how there are disturbed weirdos threatening the quiet suburban hills and more about the fact that the Yorkins somehow deserve whatever Sy decides to do to them. It's a morality tale, yes, but it's something more, as if making it to the top of our money-driven, fashion-conscious, Megamart-shopping, Kodak-moment-seeking society were somehow a punishable act of hypocrisy and selfishness in a world where people like Sy can be spawned out of neglect and cruelty.

With its meticulous presentation through Sy's eyes and overall murky attitude toward its characters, "One Hour Photo" is a little too sterile and remote to grab you emotionally. (Also, though I applaud writer/director Mark Romanek for devising a rather unusual ending, it does come across as anticlimactic.) But the movie is an interesting social commentary which might strike a somewhat personal chord if you are one of the countless people who has ever wanted a life which is, as Will Yorkin puts it, "like something out of a magazine."

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.