One Hour Photo
Robin Williams as a bad guy? Must be a joke, right?
No joke. Ever since I saw Robin play the angry dad, if only for a few seconds, at the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, I realized that he would make a really scary villain. And honestly, he's not even a villain in One Hour Photo (although the director really wants you to think just that). He's more of an anti-hero.
Williams' strength is that he's playing against type. We know he's a nut -- in a good way -- and expect him to burst out into show tunes at any moment. This just makes the bubbling cauldron of his emotions that much more compelling.
And oh yea, Williams supposedly played Dungeons & Dragons once or twice. Which makes me like him even more.
One Hour Photo's plot is simple: a photo clerk (Sy Parrish, played by Williams) at the local Wal-mart (er, Sav-Mart) sees things. Lots of things. Things he isn't always meant to see. He becomes obsessed with a family and has pictures of them all over his wall. It could happen to anyone -- it could be happening right now. Do you REALLY know what happens to your photos when you bring them in?
Things take a turn for the worse when Sy discovers, through his job, that not all is at it seems in said happy family. When he discovers infidelity -- that the image he clung to is in fact horribly tainted and all too real, he snaps. And as he snaps, we descend from the heavenly glow of the Sav-Mart's white lights to a dizzying kaleidoscope of hell.
The lensing is a primary character in this film: Greens, yellows, and reds (the color separation of photos, get it?) are all carefully lensed to give a surreal edge to Sye's rage, his madness, his sorrow. Colors are dissonant even though Sye himself is nearly invisible in his pastel clothes. His home is a stark, barren wasteland of color. The only thing that bothered me about the lensing is that the colors often seemed randomly placed -- something I have been trained by other directors to look for as a hint to further meaning in the movie (thanks to Spielberg and the red coat in Schindler's List and Shamalayan's red everything in Sixth Sense). But that's on purpose too, as there IS no meaning to Sye's world beyond the pictures he takes.
One Hour Photo is as much about the ideal American family that you see in department store catalogs as it is about Eleanor Rigbys of the world. For every American ideal, there is a flawed interior. For every pleasant, affable man, there is a demon waiting to be unleashed.
The ending is twisted and poignant, although some might feel it's a cop out. It explains Sye's history, why he so desperately needs a perfect family in his head, and why pictures hold so much affection for him. It also explains his subsequent violence and rage when said family cannot live up to his ideals. There's even a twist at the end -- something Maleficent picked up on but that I missed.
This is one of those movies that I didn't like nearly as much until thinking about it afterward. It's a classic depiction of suburban hell, an intellectual horror. It reminded me a lot of Session 9, only without the insane asylum.
See it, but don't expect a slasher flick (despite the trailers).
No joke. Ever since I saw Robin play the angry dad, if only for a few seconds, at the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, I realized that he would make a really scary villain. And honestly, he's not even a villain in One Hour Photo (although the director really wants you to think just that). He's more of an anti-hero.
Williams' strength is that he's playing against type. We know he's a nut -- in a good way -- and expect him to burst out into show tunes at any moment. This just makes the bubbling cauldron of his emotions that much more compelling.
And oh yea, Williams supposedly played Dungeons & Dragons once or twice. Which makes me like him even more.
One Hour Photo's plot is simple: a photo clerk (Sy Parrish, played by Williams) at the local Wal-mart (er, Sav-Mart) sees things. Lots of things. Things he isn't always meant to see. He becomes obsessed with a family and has pictures of them all over his wall. It could happen to anyone -- it could be happening right now. Do you REALLY know what happens to your photos when you bring them in?
Things take a turn for the worse when Sy discovers, through his job, that not all is at it seems in said happy family. When he discovers infidelity -- that the image he clung to is in fact horribly tainted and all too real, he snaps. And as he snaps, we descend from the heavenly glow of the Sav-Mart's white lights to a dizzying kaleidoscope of hell.
The lensing is a primary character in this film: Greens, yellows, and reds (the color separation of photos, get it?) are all carefully lensed to give a surreal edge to Sye's rage, his madness, his sorrow. Colors are dissonant even though Sye himself is nearly invisible in his pastel clothes. His home is a stark, barren wasteland of color. The only thing that bothered me about the lensing is that the colors often seemed randomly placed -- something I have been trained by other directors to look for as a hint to further meaning in the movie (thanks to Spielberg and the red coat in Schindler's List and Shamalayan's red everything in Sixth Sense). But that's on purpose too, as there IS no meaning to Sye's world beyond the pictures he takes.
One Hour Photo is as much about the ideal American family that you see in department store catalogs as it is about Eleanor Rigbys of the world. For every American ideal, there is a flawed interior. For every pleasant, affable man, there is a demon waiting to be unleashed.
The ending is twisted and poignant, although some might feel it's a cop out. It explains Sye's history, why he so desperately needs a perfect family in his head, and why pictures hold so much affection for him. It also explains his subsequent violence and rage when said family cannot live up to his ideals. There's even a twist at the end -- something Maleficent picked up on but that I missed.
This is one of those movies that I didn't like nearly as much until thinking about it afterward. It's a classic depiction of suburban hell, an intellectual horror. It reminded me a lot of Session 9, only without the insane asylum.
See it, but don't expect a slasher flick (despite the trailers).
posted by talien | 8:28 PM
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