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litheraI want to see this movie so much...
It's long so I'm cutting it...
ONE HOUR PHOTO
Mark Romanek has made a film of uncommon delicacy here, a stylized masterpiece that features one of the finest performances in the long career of Robin Williams. Despite being sold as a thriller, this is something far deeper than that, a cold and sterile poem about a very twisted soul, the madman behind the friendly eyes of the guy at the store who knows your name. Maybe it’s the kid at the video store or someone at the post office or the guy who does your copying. You see them often enough, you start to exchange pleasantries. You find new things to chat about. You get a little window into their life, and they get a glimpse into yours.
What if he liked what he saw so much that he wanted it to be his? What if it was so important to him that he’d hurt anyone who ruined it?
Romanek wrote and directed this film, and it’s as a double-threat that he impresses. The script dares to shake convention in the way it’s constructed, in the way we find ourselves drawn into the world of Sy Parrish, “Sy The Photo Guy.” Romanek doesn’t want to create a monster or a villain here, and he also isn’t trying to garner cheap or easy sympathy for Sy. Instead, he paints him with enough shades of gray that even after the film’s final image, I don’t know what I want for Sy, or what I think of him. I know this... ONE HOUR PHOTO lives under your skin after you walk out of the theater, and it grows the more you live with it. The real depth of Romanek’s accomplishment as a director may not be fully appreciated upon the film’s release, but I’m confident that this film will endure. It’s as strong an announcement as a director as Spike Jonze made with BEING JOHN MALKOVICH or Fincher made with SE7EN. Romanek may have made one film before this, but it's ONE HOUR PHOTO that will put him on the map. The strength of Romanek’s script, and the clarity with which he built his characters, allows him room to focus fully on the film’s visual plan. This is the second work of undeniable art by cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, whose work on FIGHT CLUB was just staggering. That’s a flashy film, though, as is fitting. It’s appropriate because of how manic and schizophrenic that film’s subject matter is. Here, Romanek’s after something totally different, and he has created a subdued but powerful palette that turns the entire frame into a comment on the state of Sy’s mental health. Production designer Tom Foden (THE CELL) has done a spectacular job of creating spaces in this film. The home of the Yorkins, the apartment of Sy, and, of course, the SavMart where Sy works the photo lab. These are remarkable externalizations of what’s going on inside these people. This is a film in which everything counts. The look, the score, the use of color. It’s all got a purpose behind it. Romanek’s a keenly intelligent and human filmmaker, something that distinguishes him from many of his music video peers. He has a flawless understanding of composition, and his love of photography and his knowledge of what makes a photograph compelling and seductive informs Sy’s world in a very specific way. Based on the strength of this one film, I can predict with confidence that Romanek’s career is going to be one of note as long as he remains true to the muse that steered him here.
And then there’s Robin Williams. Let me just say... Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams are dead.
And it’s a beautiful thing to behold.
I’m a big fan of Robin as a serious actor. I consider THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP to be an overlooked gem, and I was always fond of MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON and GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM. I’ll be the first to admit, though, that much of his work on film is simply insufferable. As much as DEAD POETS SOCIETY works because of the sure hand of Peter Weir or THE FISHER KING works because of the divine alchemy he achieved with Terry Gilliam and the rest of that cast, he often found himself adrift in movies, rudderless, out of control and over the top. Here, he’s handed himself over completely to Romanek’s vision, and he’s vanished into this character. He seems to be made of bleached cookie dough. He’s soft and vaguely spoiled. There’s something about him, something in the way he moves and deals with people, something in his eyes, perhaps, that says he’s disconnected... broken. He dresses for camoflauge, invisible except in those moments when he’s bringing the color out in an image or when he’s setting the contrast. He experiences the lives of others as he brings these moments to vivid life, captured in the prints he produces.
The family he fixates on the most is made up of Will Yorkin (Michael Vartan), his wife Nina (Connie Nielsen), and their son Jake (Dylan Smith). Yet even here, don’t walk into this expecting some easy Hollywood slasher film about a guy terrorizing a family. That’s not this movie. Romanek’s got a totally different agenda, and it’s the slow, methodical revelation of what he’s after that makes the film such a delight. Nielsen is incandescent here. She’s a stunning actress, and I loved her work in GLADIATOR, but even knowing it was her, I didn’t recognize her here at all. She’s transformed completely, and the work she does is marked by a certain quiet mixture of anger and sorrow that makes her beauty and her few moments of joy even more piercing. Vartan is also very good, especially toward the end of the film, when Romanek finally gives him some key moments to play. Again... he doesn’t want to paint anyone as an easy bad guy, as the one single focus of blame. He may be telling an impressionistic tale, ripe with symbolic composition and characterization, but he also makes his points by creating real people who we care about, who we can identify with. I can’t imagine we’re going to see a more controlled or confident debut film from a director this year.
I have to make special mention of my favorite thing about the film, something I wasn’t anticipating as I walked in. The score by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, who worked together on RUN LOLA RUN and THE PRINCESS & THE WARRIOR, is a phenomenal piece of work. As much as the work by Williams or Romanek, it is the score that sets the mood of this film, that dares us to keep up with the complicated emotional shifts the film makes. Like Clint Mansell or Craig Armstrong, these guys are pushing film scores into new and exciting sonic directions. For a film to engage all of my senses the way this one did, it takes a talented group of artists all working at the top of their craft. ONE HOUR PHOTO is a powerful work of art, and easily one of the most exciting moments I’ve had in a theater in 2002.
It's long so I'm cutting it...
ONE HOUR PHOTO
Mark Romanek has made a film of uncommon delicacy here, a stylized masterpiece that features one of the finest performances in the long career of Robin Williams. Despite being sold as a thriller, this is something far deeper than that, a cold and sterile poem about a very twisted soul, the madman behind the friendly eyes of the guy at the store who knows your name. Maybe it’s the kid at the video store or someone at the post office or the guy who does your copying. You see them often enough, you start to exchange pleasantries. You find new things to chat about. You get a little window into their life, and they get a glimpse into yours.
What if he liked what he saw so much that he wanted it to be his? What if it was so important to him that he’d hurt anyone who ruined it?
Romanek wrote and directed this film, and it’s as a double-threat that he impresses. The script dares to shake convention in the way it’s constructed, in the way we find ourselves drawn into the world of Sy Parrish, “Sy The Photo Guy.” Romanek doesn’t want to create a monster or a villain here, and he also isn’t trying to garner cheap or easy sympathy for Sy. Instead, he paints him with enough shades of gray that even after the film’s final image, I don’t know what I want for Sy, or what I think of him. I know this... ONE HOUR PHOTO lives under your skin after you walk out of the theater, and it grows the more you live with it. The real depth of Romanek’s accomplishment as a director may not be fully appreciated upon the film’s release, but I’m confident that this film will endure. It’s as strong an announcement as a director as Spike Jonze made with BEING JOHN MALKOVICH or Fincher made with SE7EN. Romanek may have made one film before this, but it's ONE HOUR PHOTO that will put him on the map. The strength of Romanek’s script, and the clarity with which he built his characters, allows him room to focus fully on the film’s visual plan. This is the second work of undeniable art by cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, whose work on FIGHT CLUB was just staggering. That’s a flashy film, though, as is fitting. It’s appropriate because of how manic and schizophrenic that film’s subject matter is. Here, Romanek’s after something totally different, and he has created a subdued but powerful palette that turns the entire frame into a comment on the state of Sy’s mental health. Production designer Tom Foden (THE CELL) has done a spectacular job of creating spaces in this film. The home of the Yorkins, the apartment of Sy, and, of course, the SavMart where Sy works the photo lab. These are remarkable externalizations of what’s going on inside these people. This is a film in which everything counts. The look, the score, the use of color. It’s all got a purpose behind it. Romanek’s a keenly intelligent and human filmmaker, something that distinguishes him from many of his music video peers. He has a flawless understanding of composition, and his love of photography and his knowledge of what makes a photograph compelling and seductive informs Sy’s world in a very specific way. Based on the strength of this one film, I can predict with confidence that Romanek’s career is going to be one of note as long as he remains true to the muse that steered him here.
And then there’s Robin Williams. Let me just say... Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams are dead.
And it’s a beautiful thing to behold.
I’m a big fan of Robin as a serious actor. I consider THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP to be an overlooked gem, and I was always fond of MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON and GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM. I’ll be the first to admit, though, that much of his work on film is simply insufferable. As much as DEAD POETS SOCIETY works because of the sure hand of Peter Weir or THE FISHER KING works because of the divine alchemy he achieved with Terry Gilliam and the rest of that cast, he often found himself adrift in movies, rudderless, out of control and over the top. Here, he’s handed himself over completely to Romanek’s vision, and he’s vanished into this character. He seems to be made of bleached cookie dough. He’s soft and vaguely spoiled. There’s something about him, something in the way he moves and deals with people, something in his eyes, perhaps, that says he’s disconnected... broken. He dresses for camoflauge, invisible except in those moments when he’s bringing the color out in an image or when he’s setting the contrast. He experiences the lives of others as he brings these moments to vivid life, captured in the prints he produces.
The family he fixates on the most is made up of Will Yorkin (Michael Vartan), his wife Nina (Connie Nielsen), and their son Jake (Dylan Smith). Yet even here, don’t walk into this expecting some easy Hollywood slasher film about a guy terrorizing a family. That’s not this movie. Romanek’s got a totally different agenda, and it’s the slow, methodical revelation of what he’s after that makes the film such a delight. Nielsen is incandescent here. She’s a stunning actress, and I loved her work in GLADIATOR, but even knowing it was her, I didn’t recognize her here at all. She’s transformed completely, and the work she does is marked by a certain quiet mixture of anger and sorrow that makes her beauty and her few moments of joy even more piercing. Vartan is also very good, especially toward the end of the film, when Romanek finally gives him some key moments to play. Again... he doesn’t want to paint anyone as an easy bad guy, as the one single focus of blame. He may be telling an impressionistic tale, ripe with symbolic composition and characterization, but he also makes his points by creating real people who we care about, who we can identify with. I can’t imagine we’re going to see a more controlled or confident debut film from a director this year.
I have to make special mention of my favorite thing about the film, something I wasn’t anticipating as I walked in. The score by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, who worked together on RUN LOLA RUN and THE PRINCESS & THE WARRIOR, is a phenomenal piece of work. As much as the work by Williams or Romanek, it is the score that sets the mood of this film, that dares us to keep up with the complicated emotional shifts the film makes. Like Clint Mansell or Craig Armstrong, these guys are pushing film scores into new and exciting sonic directions. For a film to engage all of my senses the way this one did, it takes a talented group of artists all working at the top of their craft. ONE HOUR PHOTO is a powerful work of art, and easily one of the most exciting moments I’ve had in a theater in 2002.
