Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 28, 2003, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
At the end of the audio commentary he shares with writer/director Mark Romanek on the One Hour Photo DVD, Robin Williams notes that this is the first such talk he’s done. He explains that that’s because watching and discussing one of his other movies would be like looking at himself; here, he’s able to engage the character. Anyone who has seen One Hour Photo can appreciate the difference, as the casting of the funnyman in a straight villainous role transcends gimmickry or novelty. Receding into Sy Parrish, a lonely, unbalanced photo tech at a chain department store who harbors an unhealthy obsession with a family whose pictures he develops, Williams is empathetic, creepy, sad and altogether believable. Even when the film veers into standard psychodrama toward the climax, the actor holds the film together, allowing one to forget about Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams and concentrate on the disturbed and desperate antihero he creates.
Williams’ dramatic commitment is especially impressive when one considers how easily the role could have been overplayed or made comic. Check out the Cinemax featurette on the disc, where we see the actor giving his lines funny, over-the-top inflections during on-set rehearsal; when he then slips into Sy’s soft cadences for the actual take, the transformation is remarkable. He really goes whole hog in a segment from TV’s Charlie Rose Show, in which neither the host nor Romanek can keep up with Williams as he riffs on everything from Ted Kaczynski and George Bush to animal-organ transplants. (Romanek deserves some kind of good sport award for this appearance, as the topic repeatedly veers away from the movie he and Williams are there to promote.)
These moments of hilarity are a nice balance for the One Hour supplements that are played straight. While he occasionally makes a quip (including jokes about 2001’s HAL and Marlon Brando in Island of Dr. Moreau), Williams largely stays serious on the commentary, going into a commendable amount of depth about creating Sy, while Romanek also covers a great deal of thematic and technical ground. Among other things, he confirms what anyone watching the movie will suspect: It took a separate 10-day preshoot just to create all the photos seen on Sy’s wall.
The Cinemax piece mostly covers the basics, but a Sundance Channel “Anatomy of a Scene” episode digs deeper. Incorporating welcome comments from others in the crew, this segment analyzes the emotional more than the technical demands of the moment in question: the low-key but pivotal first meeting between Sy and Will (Michael Vartan), the head of the household Sy is fixated on. Details of the creation of the movie’s three worlds (the store, Sy’s apartment and the family’s home) are explored, as are the acting exercises Romanek had the actors engage in to help discover their characters. It all adds up to a pretty complete exploration of how this idiosyncratic and often unnerving thriller was created.
And the movie itself? It has more bright hues and white environments than usual for a genre film, and in both light and dark moments, the 1.85:1 transfer is colorful and stable, with an image as clean as its Sav•Mart setting, bearing barely any grain or artifacting. (There’s minor flickering at a couple of moments, evidently the result of Romanek shooting a good deal of the film with fluorescent source lighting.) While the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio isn’t overly emphatic, the use of the full soundscape is most effective, conveying a sense of a world as lived-in as Williams’ scarily heartfelt performance.
