OneHour Photo
Mark Romanek holds Harry Truman accountable for photofinishing Japan, as though World War Two were a race/war. It’s an uncommonly visual film that opens as disconcertingly as did All The President’s Men.
The heavenly order of SlaveMart is maintained by specialized angels in cerulean vests, whose mission is to serve our better natures, while being judgmentally-scrutinized from above by Bill, the multiple-monitored, big-pictured SlaveMart manager, whose inescapeable omniscience is almost entirely powerless before the unexpectable threat posed by Sigh Perish to Bill’s only begotten daughter, on whom Sigh zooms in. Psych! Feint! Gambit!
By invoking Evangelion (the 60foot-tall, darkly-winged Angel/agent of Retribution against bad guys); and by transforming Robin Williams’ look to resemble Truman, at whiles; and by framing the Yorkin family as a pillar of apparent nuclear-familial piety riddled with broken promises on the eve of their semi-private, emotional implosion; and by depositing ill Will (Hunting) Yorkin in the hotel room of Maya Burson; and by carefully or serendipitously orchestrating dozens of similar, powerfully-disturbing snapshots, Romanek makes OneHour Photo a deeply compassionate exercise in modernAmerican (and global and universal) regret. He even provides Truman, by means of Sigh’s expository allusion to a deeply-nightmarish backstory, an excuse for the unforgivable decision to execute an unthinkable plan to destroy the nuclear family as only he can (and Truman did).
Most of the action in this exceptionally-interesting film takes place after the final act, as people who’ve been exposed to it think and talk (some may even radiate) about it; Shanley-style Doubt.
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