Though it may seem a little far-fetched analogy to some, but one is tempted to state that what Jaws did to the ocean, One Hour Photo, in its own small way, has done the same to the photo guy one gives one’s pictures to develop.
Seymour ’Sy’ Parrish (Robin Williams) is someone who all of us have met. He takes our film rolls, develops and prints them and more than often delivers the prints before the stipulated period of time. He is mild-mannered, soft-spoken with a disarming smile. And if you are one of his regular customers, sometimes, just sometimes, he makes the prints 5 X 7, when you wanted the standard 4 X 6 - at no extra cost.
Sy Parrish is the proverbial fly on the wall. Sy Parrish harbours a secret. Sy Parrish is a human time bomb about to explode.
Working behind the same counter at SavMart for almost two decades, Sy follows the same routine everyday. After work, he visits the same coffee shop, has the same food for dinner, goes back to his apartment and watches TV - alone. And when he is not busy staring at the reruns, he is engrossed with one wall of his apartment.
He looks at it and feels something that he has yearned for a long time - a sense of belonging. That wall, you see, is dotted with photos of one particular family - the Yorkins - a family that Sy, has, over the years, grown obsessively close to. Not in reality, only in his mind.
The Yorkins (an obvious take on the term ’your kin’) comprise Nina (Connie Nielsen, of Gladiator fame), her husband Will (Michael Vartan, from the hit TV series ’Alias’) and their adorable son Jake (Dylan Smith). Sy has a particular fascination towards Jake and prides in calling himself Jake’s ’Uncle Sy’.
So, what happens when Uncle Sy gets hold of an incriminating piece of evidence that shatters his notion of the Yorkins being the ideal, happy, made-for-each other family?
The pent up emotions were building, the stress was gradually reaching a boiling point, the frustration was showing underneath the apparently placid face - all it needed was one more chink to appear to shatter Sy’s already shaky mental state.
One Hour Photo is a fascinating look at the desolate human mind. It is a character study par excellence. Ace music video director Mark Romanek (veteran of the visually rich Rain and the striking Scream videos), in his debut feature film has shown a maturity in handling the camera that many established directors of today have failed to master.
The elements of photography have been skilfully woven into the cinematography. Nina and Sy emerging from the elevator is instantly reminiscent of a photograph gradually developing; there are photographic terms and references galore and last, but not least, it is the camera that becomes the tool of revenge that Sy, in a manner least expected, unleashes.
Robin Williams, in his third venture at exploring the dark side of human nature (after Death To Smoochy and Insomnia) comes up trumps. It takes a superhuman effort not to like ’Sy, the photo guy’. And that is where the accomplishments of both the actor and the director lie.
Bereft of all the technical wizardry that normally accompanies his music videos, Romanek has crafted a tale that could easily have turned Sy into a monster caricature. Instead, it becomes a probe into the psyche of someone who is very much a part of all our memorable occasions, but somehow is always missing from the viewfinder of life.