![]() Even the small acts of kindness he shows them float along unstable undercurrents. Sy’s relationship with the Yorkins is unhealthy from the start, of course. It’s the moment where his fondness bleeds into fantasy, and where Sy’s fixation becomes truly dangerous. A waitress notices Sy flipping through his ill-gotten snappies and asks if they’re his family. Apart from customers, the closest human company Sy has is stacks of duplicate photos of the Yorkins he surreptitiously prints at work and arranges into a panel on his wall. Parents might be able to bullshit their kids, but the camera doesn’t. Sy isn’t lonely he has people in his life who love him. Nina pulls a classic grownup move: she lies. “When someone seems sad, they don’t have any friends, and people make fun of them, that makes me feel bad for them,” Jake tells his mom, clutching a Hoberman sphere as he cuddles under the covers at bedtime. ![]() Romanek (who wrote the script) and Williams both treat Sy with inexhaustible empathy, funneled into the narrative initially through his favorite customers, the Yorkins: Nina (Connie Nielsen), Will (Michael Vartan), and their kindhearted son, Jake (Dylan Smith). Otherwise, we might guess he lives on the derelict side of town.īut nothing about the film’s presentation reads as smug, mean-spirited, or exploitative. A pair of cars parked on the curb provide the only other proof of life in his neighborhood. The sidewalk is barren except for Sy and one other person, who brusquely passes by with neither a word nor a glance. Early on, Cronenwerth photographs Sy arriving at his apartment building, ready to wind down after a day at the office. But through cinematographer Jeff Cronenwerth’s lens, nothing is trivial. One Hour Photo emphasizes Sy’s solitude by alternating broad strokes and observations so fleeting they appear trivial. Sy wakes up, eats breakfast, gets dressed, goes to work, spends his shift staring at happy people’s happy memories, goes home, eats dinner, feeds the hamster, and goes to sleep. Like Sy, the chubby rodent’s day comprises a strict, monkish routine of running a loop. That hamster is the most on-the-nose detail Romanek gives to the character. Sy lives alone, in every possible sense of the phrase.
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