One Hour Photo



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. Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, One Hour Photo received positive reviews from film critics, with praise for Romanek's writing and Cronenweth's cinematography, while Williams' against-type performance received universal critical acclaim, earning him a Saturn Award for Best Actor.

Plot
Seymour "Sy" Parrish (Robin Williams) is a photo technician at a one-hour photo in a big-box store. He's a perfectionist with a fawning appreciation of his customers and work and every day he labors to ensure the store's customers get the best quality photos possible. His work is his life, as he has no one and nothing to go home to at the end of each day; he spends his evenings sitting alone in his barren living room, watching television. His favorite customers are the Yorkin family: husband Will (Michael Vartan), wife Nina (Connie Nielsen), and their son Jake (Dylan Smith). He has developed their photos for many years and is obsessed with the family, using his access to their photos to gain an extremely detailed understanding of their personal lives.

Sy secretly makes his own copies of the Yorkins' photos from the film negatives and used the photos to cover an entire wall in his apartment. He fantasizes about being a member of their family and sharing in the love he assumes they feel. He is painfully shy and socially inept, however, and his attempts to become closer to the family are gently rebuffed. Sy eventually manages to spark a connection with Nina when he pretends to be interested in a book that he saw her purchase. Nina asks Sy personal questions about his life, realizing that he lives a solitary existence, something only Jake had considered previously. The next day, his boss Bill (Gary Cole) fires him after learning that Sy's machine has printed many more prints than have been ordered and paid for, as well as for giving Jake Yorkin a disposable camera free for his birthday, and for an enormous quarrel in public with the "Agfa Guy", who performed maintenance on the machine. While inspecting his photos for the last time, Sy discovers that Will is having an extramarital affair, and his idyllic conception of the Yorkins as the perfect family is shattered. Sy secretly places photos of Will and his mistress, Maya Burson (Erin Daniels), into a packet of photos that Nina was scheduled to pick up at SavMart, in order to make her aware of her husband's infidelity.

Sy follows and takes pictures of Bill's young daughter, and sends them to Bill as a threat. Yoshi, another SavMart employee, discovers the pictures and turns them over to Bill, leading to a police investigation against Sy. While detectives Van Der Zee (Eriq La Salle) and Outerbridge (Clark Gregg) discover Sy's obsession, Sy confronts Will and Maya during a rendezvous in their hotel room. Armed with a knife and a camera, Sy forces the lovers to pose naked in sexual positions while he takes pictures. After the confrontation, Sy sees that the police have arrived at the hotel and he escapes through an emergency exit. The exit door trips an alarm and Van Der Zee pursues him while Outerbridge discovers Will and Maya, physically unharmed but deeply traumatized. The police apprehend Sy in the parking garage. Upon being arrested, Sy claims, "I just took pictures."

Van Der Zee interrogates Sy and asks him why he terrorized the Yorkins. Sy states that he can tell Van Der Zee is a good father who would never take "disgusting, sick, degrading pictures" of his children doing "things that children shouldn't do". (The implication is that Sy's father exploited him for child pornography.) Sy then asks for the pictures that he took at the hotel, which Van Der Zee has described as evidence. They appear to be only shots of objects and furnishings of a hotel room. The film closes with an imagined family picture of the Yorkins with Will's arm around a smiling Sy.

Cast

 * Robin Williams as Seymour "Sy" Parrish
 * Michael Vartan as Will Yorkin
 * Connie Nielsen as Nina Yorkin
 * Dylan Smith as Jake Yorkin
 * Gary Cole as Bill Owens, Manager
 * Erin Daniels as Maya Burson
 * Eriq La Salle as Det. James Van Der Zee
 * Clark Gregg as Det. Paul Outerbridge
 * Paul H. Kim as Yoshi Araki

Production
Romanek intended the film to be much longer, but the studio ordered it to be shortened, and elements rearranged out of concerns about commerciality. The beginning, for example, was moved to the end. Also, several of Sy's narrative monologues were removed, and several scenes were re-shot with fewer lines. The original version also has older musical scores that were not used in the final product. A director's cut is not available to buy, but was shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Trent Reznor, of the band Nine Inch Nails, composed the original film score, but Romanek opted not to use it. Some of the music evolved into the material on the Nine Inch Nails EP Still.

In accordance with the photography-themed movie, the names of several characters are drawn from actual photographers: Sy's assistant at the Savmart, Yoshi Araki (named for Nobuyoshi Araki); Det. Van Der Zee (James Van Der Zee); Det. Outerbridge (Paul Outerbridge); 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.

In one of the voice-over pieces Sy can be heard to say "They actually believe that any idiot that attends a two-day seminar can master the art of making beautiful prints in less than an hour. But of course, like most things, there's far more to it than meets the eye." Robin Williams prepared for the role by training for two and-a-half days in a Southern California photo development lab.

In an interview, Romanek said that he was inspired to create this movie by the films of 'lonely men' from the 1970s, notably Taxi Driver (1976).

In the DVD commentary, Romanek says that Jack Nicholson was first approached to play the lead character. Nicholson turned the role down.

Critical response
One Hour Photo opened to generally positive reviews, earning raves from Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and other noted critics. The film has an 81% positive rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The film's aggregate score at Metacritic is 64 out of 100.

Box office
The film's limited release began on August 21, 2002 in seven theaters, opening to a $321,515 weekend, with an average of $45,930 per theater. Its wide release began on September 13, with a 1,212 theater count. Still, the film made just over $8 million that weekend, and went on to gross $31,597,131 in the US, with an additional $20,626,175 in overseas territories, for an international total of $52,223,306; this was a moderate box office success, as the budget was around $12 million.