One Hour Photo

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Movie
German title One Hour Photo
Original title One Hour Photo
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Mark Romanek
script Mark Romanek
production Pamela Koffler
Christine Vachon
Stan Wlodkowski
music Reinhold Heil
Johnny Klimek
camera Jeff Cronenweth
cut Jeffrey Ford
occupation

One Hour Photo is a 2002 psychological thriller directed by Mark Romanek .

action

The film begins and ends in a police interrogation room. Seymour ("Sy") Parrish tells a police officer the story that led to his arrest.

The photo developer has been working in the photo department of a supermarket branch ("SavMart") for years , where he accepts the customers' photo films, which are developed in the back room of the store within an hour. He is particularly fond of the Yorkin family, whose photos he has been developing for them since the birth of their son Jake nine years earlier and whose mother Nina is one of his regular customers. In his conceptions, Sy sees himself as part of the Yorkin family without ever having had close contact with the family.

The relationship between Sy and the Yorkin family is intensified by Sys courteous service at the photo shop and his efforts to participate in their private life. Seemingly random homecoming Join Jake after his football -Training or discussion with Nina about the book The Path to Love (in German: love Learn to live happily ) the spiritual writer Deepak Chopra , the Sy bought after he found out about the non-fiction book through Nina, strengthen Sy’s ambition to be part of the family. He has daydreams in which he lives with them and thus increasingly neglects his work. Sys interest is also shown by the fact that he made prints of all the family's films for himself and stuck them on the wall in his apartment.

It is precisely this practice that leads to his termination one day. Sys boss Bill has found out that there is a difference of hundreds of pictures between the prints made and those actually sold. The job, for which Sy has done everything and which he used to carry out with the utmost meticulousness, is taken from him and he only has a few days left in his photo shop.

In the final days of his job, a woman named Maya Burson, whom he later identifies as a member of Will's former softball team , comes to his desk to have some photos developed. As Sy realizes a little later in these photos, this woman has an extramarital relationship with Nina's husband Will. At this moment a world collapses for Sy. He mixes a photo of Will and his affair Maya kissing each other deeply with the developed photos from Jake's disposable camera, which Sy had given him on his birthday contrary to the custom of business.

But Sys's attempt fails because Nina continues to live normally with Will instead of arguing with him, as Sy would have expected. Sy himself hunted down Will with hatred. The first thing he does is take snapshots of his former boss' daughter and have them developed at his old workplace, which he has had to leave in the meantime. These photos make the boss aware of him and notify the police. This penetrates into Sys apartment and finds the wall on which the life of the Yorkins is depicted in many photographs over the last nine years. Will Yorkin's face scraped off Sy in all of the photos after learning of his infidelity.

At the same time, Sy gains access to the hotel room where Will and Maya are meeting. There he threatens the two with a knife stolen in the Savmart and forces them to simulate sexual intercourse while he photographs them. However, the police are already on his track and arrest him in the hotel parking garage after the crime.

In the last scene you see Sy again sitting in the interrogation room. In a monologue, he indicates that he was sexually abused and photographed as a child at home. He finally asks the policeman to see the prints from the film from the second cartridge that was still in his camera. He receives the photos and spreads them out on the table in front of him: They show seemingly unimportant details of the hotel room he was in after the crime. (At an earlier point Sy had stated in a voiceover that it was the little things that reproduced the true picture of life, but no one would photograph them.) The last shot first shows Sy in a close-up, then fades to an imaginary family photo he and the Yorkin family smile at the camera together.

Awards

  • Saturn Award 2003: Best Actor for Robin Williams - also nominated for Best Thriller , Music , Supporting Actress (Connie Nielsen), Screenplay
  • various prizes at the Deauville Film Festival 2002
  • Online Film Critics Society Award 2003
  • Nomination for the Excellence in Production Design Award of the Art Directors Guild 2003
  • 2003 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards nomination
  • Nomination for the International Horror Guild Award 2003
  • Nomination for the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival 2003
  • Nomination for the Young Artist Award 2003 - Best Supporting Actor for Dylan Smith
  • The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating "valuable".

Reviews

In his review published on ReelViews , James Berardinelli particularly praised the "powerful" and "haunting" portrayal of Robin Williams, which removes any doubts about his ability to play a completely serious character. Despite its weaknesses towards the end, the film functions as an “effective” portrait of a “lonely”, “disturbed” person.

According to Roger Ebert, Williams plays "so well" that you don't have the slightest problem accepting him in his role. Ebert compared the film to eyes of fear and American beauty .

“A feature film debut with an imagery that at first glance appears laconic, which then increasingly turns out to be chatty. The design, which is rich in details in terms of features and colors, tends to exaggerate and gives the main actor little leeway to free the psychogram of an extreme offender from conventionality. "

- Lexicon of international film

“With a gifted, technical talent and careful script, cinema debutant Mark Romanek creates a gentle, sad and exquisitely staged image of the soul of a lonely man. He owes the superb, eerie atmosphere not least to his great leading actor Robin Williams. "

- filmspiegel.de

background

In one scene, photo developer Sy Parrish watches the American animated series The Simpsons in his living room on television , namely the episode Am Kap der Angst from season five (German-language first broadcast: October 2, 1999). Similar to One Hour Photo , this Simpsons episode is about a murderous person, a clown named Tingeltangel-Bob, who chases after and terrorizes a middle-class family. At the same time, this Simpsons episode parodies the plot of the thriller Cape of Fear from 1991. In another scene, the black and white science fiction film The day the earth stood still by director Robert Wise from 1951 is shown on Sy’s television .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for One Hour Photo . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h One Hour Photo (2002) - Awards. In: IMDb . Accessed August 10, 2020 (English).
  3. ^ One Hour Photo. In: German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) . Retrieved August 10, 2020 .
  4. ↑ James Berardinelli: One Hour Photo - A Film Review by James Berardinelli. In: ReelViews. 2002, accessed on August 10, 2020 .
  5. ^ Roger Ebert: One Hour Photo. In: RogerEbert.com. August 23, 2002, accessed August 10, 2020 .
  6. ^ One Hour Photo. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ^ Thomas Schlömer: One Hour Photo. In: film mirror . Archived from the original on September 16, 2010 ; accessed on March 17, 2015 .