Instead of dodging grenades and skirting around likely terrorist targets, we glance furtively over our shoulders when we find someone walking behind us for more than a few minutes at night. We whisk our sons and daughters away from strangers they are trying to befriend, and dash about in dread when we realize our kids have stepped beyond our radar for more than a few seconds in a public place. We inhabit a culture in which the unthinkable, if not likely, is at least possible, an awareness which drives many to live in a state of constant, low-level paranoia. We prepare for the worst and hope for . . . something slightly less horrible.

Consequently, we live much of our lives consciously, intentionally, alone.

We're quite willing to disassemble the barriers we have erected when around a carefully selected handful of family members and close friends, but with casual acquaintances and kind but complete strangers we ossify that protective bubble into which we have locked ourselves, creating a barely permeable, shock proof sphere that resists casual attempts at closeness. Practical excuses involving time-use, responsible parenting, and past, relational injuries grow into hardened instincts, prompting us to bounce back from most of those with whom we come in contact.

Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo (2002) displays the likely results of such antisocial instincts, following the life of an unmarried, middle-aged photo clerk who experiences happiness only vicariously, through the lives of a family whose photographs he has developed for years. Both Sy and the Yorkin family into which he imaginatively inserts himself lead troubled, lonely lives. Sy's more obvious isolation finds an unfortunate echo in the marriage of Will Yorkin, a young professional who neglects his son and has recently begun cheating on his wife. Each man could benefit from the friendship and intervention of the other, but a deep social chasm carved out by our society's unspoken rules of engagement keeps them at arm's length.

Sy's attempts to bridge this gap come off as uniformly creepy. Romanek knows his audience, and plays to our fears of what Sy could be up to as he ignores the privacy mandate so cherished by our culture and intrudes on the Yorkin family in a number of small, almost unnoticeable ways.

Sy's lonely dinner at the local diner gently massages our sympathies until a friendly waitress asks Sy about the Yorkin photos he's flipping through and he hesitatingly passes them off as family photos. When we discover that Sy has made many such copies of the Yorkin family's photos, and used them to wallpaper one side of his living room, we begin to shudder--less at the repeated, deft acts of theft required to make these prints than at the potentially dangerous obsession of a man with no one to love. Composer Reinhold Heil's movement from gentle harp music to the ominous tones of a synthesizer insures that our dread at this moment trumps any inclination towards pity.

That Sy knows so much about the Yorkin boy--his address, age, and toy preferences--inclines us to feel the same unease evident in Mrs. Yorkin as she drops off a few rolls of film at the one-hour photo lab, and Sy's later attempt to give young Jake a toy after showing up at his soccer practice and walking him home operates like sharp nails on the chalkboard of our parental instincts. Having caught sight of Mrs. Yorkin at the local mall, Sy follows her to the food court and successfully strikes up a familiar conversation by flashing a book he knows she's read (Deepak Chopra's The Path to Love). Surely Sy's friendliness towards this family masks the ugly intentions of a molester or stalker, instead of the simple overtures of a hermit determined to exit his cave.

Surely.

Nine-year-old Jake believes otherwise. One evening as his mother puts him to bed, he shares his concern that Sy "the photo guy" is lonely. His mother responds with predictable words of comfort: "We don't know that Sy is sad . . . he probably has a girlfriend, and a mom and dad who love him." Then, just in case, she suggests that the two of them pause for a moment and send Sy some "good thoughts," insuring her son that the middle-aged man will be happier the next time they see him.

And this is exactly the degree to which most of us are willing to extend ourselves. Fear and uncertainty keep us reserved and at home: we sacrifice the hurting hordes around us to throw an extra layer of protection around ourselves. The affection-deprived elderly man on the street corner desperate to hug passing children, the pan-handling woman unable to win our attention, the single African mother suffering from AIDS . . . the strange man at the photo lab: each receives our repeated, cold indifference like so may slaps in the face.

And sometimes, our inaction creates the very monsters we fear. At least, that's what many viewers will conclude upon finishing this flick. Sy's radical attempts to prompt self-reflection and catalyze change in the Yorkin family will appear unequivocally monstrous to the many among us less concerned with honesty and real intimacy than with privacy. Most of us would rather struggle indefinitely through personal problems than open ourselves to the insights of outsiders.

What if, instead of shunning those who blunder about in their attempts to gain our friendship, we just gave them a measure of friendship on the spot? What if we slowed down enough to gaze into another eyes and, like a child, read something of the pain hiding behind their eyes?

We might actually create the world we hesitate to expect.