Sy gets all kind of customers: the old lady who takes pictures only of her cats, the amateur porn artists, the insurance claims adjuster who brings in pictures of wrecked cars,.... and the Yorkin's, a family who brings their photos to Savmart since their son's Jake's birthday. Sy has fallen in love with this "perfect" family and wishes for nothing more than to be a part of it. What he doesn't know is that they aren't that perfect and what they don't know is that he always makes an additional set of their photos for himself.
Sy's life isn't very exciting. He lives in a sparsely furnished apartment downtown and doesn't have any friends. He only seems to live for his work, so the day when he gets fired is like the end of the world for him. But if that wasn't enough already: only a few days later he finds out that Mr. Yorkin is cheating on his partner. Now that is the end of the world!
What can Sy do about it? He has to open Mrs. Yorkin's eyes! To accomplish this, he delivers some photos showing her husband with his girlfriend to her, anonymous of course. On the day she finds out, Sy sits in his car in front of their house, waiting for the big event, the moment when Mrs. Yorkin confronts her husband with the news, his camera ready. But nothing happens. "What the hell's wrong with these people?" Sy has to find another way to punish the disloyal husband...
Writer and director Mark Romanek has always been fascinated by those big 24 hour discount stores; that inspired him to make "One Hour Photo". He wanted to make a film with the main character working at such a supermarket. The film crew took an abandoned "Office Depot" and build the store from scratch. Romanek especially attached importance to the lightning of the store, which is very bright, and the colors. Sy's working clothes are the same colors as the store, so he sometimes seems to literally disappear in it. Additionally, the director was influenced by the "lonely man movies" from the 70s (which he grew up with) like "Taxi Driver" and "The Tenant".
What other intentions did Mark Romanek have with "One Hour Photo"? He wanted to leave the audience uncertain about the plot; the audience wouldn't know what's going to happen next and it wouldn't even know what the whole film is about. Is it a film about photography or is it a film about a mass murderer? This nescience makes the film interesting. It begins with a scene at a police station just after Sy has been arrested, so we know that he's done something illegal, but we have no clue what it is unless that it's somehow related to Mr. Yorkin. The following - the actual film - is a flashback of Sy's memories. What the filmmakers did not intend was a deeper interpretation of why Symour became the kind of character that is shown in the film and this is the only thing I really missed. At the end of the film, when we go back to its beginning where Sy is questioned at the police station, it becomes pretty clear that his parents abused him as a child, making pornographic pictures of him, even if we don't get a real evidence of it since he only says to the police officer "you would never do this or that to your children". He never talks about himself. But it is obvious that he talks about his own experiences and this would also explain why he has this strong relation to photography: the pictures that were taken of him when he was a child were dirty, dark and bad, taken by a despicable family; now he wants to make this up by taking bright and cheerful pictures of a lovable family.
In my opinion, what the film really is about is loneliness. If you often feel lonely, this is the right flick for you! I wish that the runtime had been a little longer (it's just the default 1.5 hours) so we could take a deeper look into Sy's character. Maybe some flashbacks from his past would have been helpful. Aside from that the film is perfect.
The DVD is very nice: it features many things you would look for as a fan of this film, among other things e.g. an audio commentary, commercial spots, a documentation and a featurette. Don't expect too much from the audio commentary: almost all important remarks are also made in the documentation/featurette, which are very interesting. The DVD menus are very nice too.
The film's score is great - a modern mixture between a sad/scary harp/piano piece and some symphonic orchestral music at the end. To fully enjoy this, you need a 5.1 audio system. For example, there is this scene in the hotel, where Sy is walking through the hotel floors, looking for the right room, and this scene is accompanied by a nice bass which is clearly directed to the subwoofer (the "1" in "5.1"). Your neighbors will love it!
Let me close with some words from the director about the star of today's gallery, Dylan Smith. They are taken from the audio commentary and are spoken at the scene where the boy delivers his birthday films at Savmart together with his Mom (see picture #4):
"This is Dylan Smith, playing Jake, who has never acted before and never been in front of a camera and never had any special interest in being an actor; just a wonderfully natural and really unaffected child performance.... Just the way he fixes his hair here, he just doesn't seem to be aware that there's a camera and this is fantastic."
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