"No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget."
Sy (Robin Williams)
Most people probably remember Robin Williams for his many comic and semi–comic roles. Nothing wrong with that. He was a gifted man in that department.
But what is often overlooked is the fact that Williams could do other things, too, as he proved in "One Hour Photo," which premiered on this day in 2002. It just might have been Williams' finest performance — even though it wasn't nominated for an Oscar.
You have heard, I presume, of an actor playing against type? Well, Williams' performance in "One Hour Photo" was the definition of playing against type. Most people, as I say, remember Williams as a zany character who sometimes played dramatic roles — but he never, as far as I can recall, ever played a character like Sy, an introverted film processor at a one–hour photo lab in a shopping mall. Sy was one of those faceless and nameless people who surround us daily, and most live their lives without drawing attention to themselves or causing others harm.
(I know. Robin Williams? Introverted?)
Sy was somewhat given to obsession. He was obsessed with his work and, through it, he became obsessed with a young family. He had been developing their photos for years and had been secretly copying their photos and decorating his apartment with them.
Truth be told, Sy was emotionally involved with everyone who brought in their film to be processed — but he was particularly obsessed with this family, primarily the mother (Connie Nielsen) and her son (Dylan Smith) since they were always the ones who dropped off the film and picked up the prints. The father (Michael Vartan) was only known to Sy through the photographs in the rolls of film he developed.
In his mind they were his family. I suppose a lot of people who live alone are like that. OK, they don't process film anymore, but fantasy utilizes whatever one's reality is and embellishes it. Sy's reality was the solitude of the dark room and his cramped apartment. That was his life ... such as it was.
In Sy's case, his work was his life. It wasn't so odd, really, that the two should merge. If only in his mind.
He didn't really have much of a life, anyway, so he projected his expectations of the perfect life and the perfect family on this young family with whom he was so obsessed. You don't need to be an expert to know that isn't healthy.
But Sy was seen as harmless enough so his ham–handed attempts to get closer to the young family were politely and discreetly brushed aside.
And I guess you don't need to be a trained psychologist to know that when someone is obsessed with someone else and a blemish arises, it can be a shattering experience. So it was with Sy and this young family.
The young husband was having an extramarital affair, and that didn't set well with Sy when he discovered it.
Now, Sy was clearly a disturbed individual, but I wondered when I first saw this movie whether someone like Sy would have done what he did if he had not been dismissed from his job by the store manager (Gary Cole).
Sy's habit of making prints for himself for which he had not paid caught up with him along with some other transgressions. Cole fired him — and that really was the catalyst for a string of events.
Later, when being interrogated, Sy's remarks strongly implied that he had been sexually abused by his father and perhaps ordered to perform sex acts as a child while being photographed by his father.
That scene has always made me think of Anthony Perkins in the final scene of "Psycho". The stories were different, but they were essentially indictments of what the fathers had done with their children were young.
The sins of the father.
It was a character — and a performance — worthy of Hitchcock.
It reminded me of when I was a young reporter covering the police and crime beats at my first newspaper job. Although the county in which I lived and worked was rather sparsely populated, it had about half a dozen murder trials while I was there — and I covered them all.
On one occasion I covered a murder trial in which the defendant was found guilty — but then, during the punishment phase of the trial, the defense presented evidence of something even the defendant knew nothing about — his mother had been mentally retarded and had been incapable of defending him when his father abused him.
Apparently the mother had been aware that something bad was happening, but the defendant did not understand that she could not come to his defense, and it had planted a seed of resentment within him that was manifested in many complicated ways when he became an adult — one of which was his brutal rape and murder of a young girl.
He was overcome with emotion after hearing testimony about his mother during his penalty phase, and the jury was moved to sentence him to life in prison instead of execution.
Sy didn't commit a violent act, but if his conversation with the detective at the end of the movie said nothing else, it bore witness to the lasting — and tragic — consequences of physical and emotional abuse.
