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 "When
we look through our photo albums, we're seeing a record of only
the happy moments of our lives.... No one ever takes a photograph
of something we want to forget." Sy Parrish has seen many people's
lives through their photographs. For eleven years he has worked
developing film at Sav-Mart. The world around him is filled with
everything you might need. Sav-Mart is a land of abundance. And
Sy is over in his little corner of the store -- near it all, but
far away.
 Sy
has no life apart from the photos he develops. Through those photos
he has made himself a fantasy world. He has a wall at his home filled
with pictures of Will, Nora and Jake Yorkin going back for all his
years at Sav-Mart. He knows them intimately (or at least their happy
moments.) He longs to be a part of their family, and in his mind
he is.
 Robin
Williams provides a great performance in letting us into this world
of loneliness and isolation. And like many isolated characters,
there is a great deal of creepiness about him. Like Norman Bates
in Psycho or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, we know that being so
cut off from everything else in the world exacts a terrible toll.
 Then,
Sy discovers that that the peace and joy of his "family" is threatened.
It doesn't show in the pictures, of course; they are "only the happy
moments of our lives." He acts to save the family, although he can
only do so in a misguided way. His anger and sense of justice lead
to a truly Hitchcockian climax.
 Director
Mark Romanek, until now a director of music videos, has made good
use of the visual. There are lots of photos throughout the film,
not just the snapshots, but mug shots, employee of the month pictures.
They are a reminder of the ways we mark so much in our lives with
these visuals. We are told much, through what we see -- the abundance
of Sav-Mart, the emptiness of Sy's room. At the end, we even see
deep into Sy's soul through the photos he's taken. Although we only
see them indirectly, they are a moving statement of his life.
There
are some flaws in the story. For instance, why did it take eleven
years before the store noticed that the counts on the machine were
showing hundreds of pictures more than other counts? But this is
far less about plot than it is about character.
 Being
introverted myself; I know I have a little bit of Sy within. I often
feel like I have my little corner, and the world of fullness and
joy is all around, but not quite where I am. Sy tried to find salvation
from his isolation. (I don't think it's coincidence that he worked
at a store called Sav-Mart.) But his attempts at salvation were
only in his mind. He never truly made contact with others. He didn't
have community. He knew he needed it, but could never find a way
to it.
 It
could also be that the world is becoming more and more like Sy's
world. We each have our own spot, our own little counter where we
work and live. We see others and think that their lives are perfect.
We want to be a part of so much else, but don't know how to get
there.  The
Yorkins may look like the ideal family -- young, affluent, happy
-- but they are just as isolated from one another as Sy is from
the world.
The
truly scary thing about this film is not that someone might obsess
like Sy does, but that there are so many ways that he mirrors our
world.
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