Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I love these screenings held for college students where the filmmaker speaks afterwards. I’ve been to many of these at the AFI over the years, and this one would have been fun to see.
Hey there Harry I just got out of another screening here at USC. I wrote in with a Windtalkers review a little bit ago. Tonight One Hour Photo was screened and accompanied by the film's director Mark Romanek and editor Jeffrey Ford. I was excited to see this movie. I had seen the trailer on Apple’s website and heard decent things about it at Sundance. For those who don’t know Romanek is the music video director behind Nine inch Nails’ “closer” and “The Perfect Drug” as well as Madonna: The Video Collection. He has also worked with No Doubt, Mick Jagger, and others. This is his first feature film and I was interested to see how his music video experience would translate into film.
Going into the movie I was anticipating a very stylized film and that is what I got. There are a lot of wide-angle shots and quirky color hues, and beautiful composition in the frame. It is quite pretty but very un-MTV. The editing and pacing of the film is much slower than I expected, but works. To his credit he didn’t try and make a 2 hour music video, he tried to make a movie. The film is told episodically and framed with bookends in the narrative.
Robin Williams plays the lead character in another one of his recent “darker” roles. I saw Insomnia and Death to Smoochie both of which I thought he played to the best of his ability given the material. Williams has a very restrained role in this movie, even more so than the aforementioned Insomnia. Williams plays a lonely one hour photo clerk at a suburbian SAV-MART grocery store. The film opens with a scene of Williams in an interrogation room with a police officer (Eriq La Salle) questioning him. The police officer asks why and how he could do such a thing to the Yorkin family. The officer holds an envelope of pictures that Williams has taken, but Williams does not get to see them and neither do we. Right from the beginning we know he has done something.
The first act is very slow. I would go as far as to say the first two acts are very slow. But don’t leave the theater because the intensity spikes towards the end as real world forces toy with Williams’ character more and more. It’s a punch that needs precious time to build up, and I think it delivers.
Romanek has tried to create a dreamlike quality within the framework of the film. He plays with time and space, but not in a drastic way. The movie is essentially from Williams’ POV. The premise involves Williams as an 11 year photo employee who has watched the Yorkin Family grow through the pictures that he develops for them. Williams’ character is a very lonely man and projects himself into the happiness of the family he sees on film. Then things go awry and a decent thriller of a movie emerges.
This film is different which means you haven’t seen anything like it. Romanek admitted that one of his goals in making the film was to do something different, to be a bit weirder and unique. In that I think he has succeeded.
Romanek owes a lot to the Germans who scored the film Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil. These are the same geniuses behind Run Lola Run and the Princess and the Warrior. The sound design is quirky and experimental as they dynamic duo use a 40 man string orchestra as well as Synthesized sound. The score made me think of Requiem for a Dream in addition to their previous two films. The score helps to create much of the tension (isn’t it usually the case though) and greatly complements Romanek’s style (or is it the other way around?).
In all I am glad that I saw the film. This is going to be a film that some people simply won’t like based on the way it looks and the pace of the film. One sore spot for me though was that there is ambiguity in the ending. Romanek said he wanted to let the audience decide certain things which is a device that makes little sense in one of his scenarios. Romanek is the writer and director of the film and took complete credit for the end product. He said the script underwent little change and that the studio let him run with his ideas. So if you love it, hate it, or are simply indifferent you know who to thank or blame for what you see on screen.
TTFN,
The OGDP
Oh, man, I need to see this film. I’m holding out for a theatrical viewing first, and don’t want to see one of the tapes floating around town. The temptation... oh, the temptation...
"Moriarty" out.
