Stay (2005/I)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Marc Forster

Writer (WGA):

David Benioff (written by)

Release Date:

21 October 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

You Can't Stay Between the Living and the Dead.

Plot:

This movie focuses on the attempts of a psychiatrist to prevent one of his patients from committing suicide while trying to maintain his own grip on reality.

Plot Keywords:

Psychiatrist | Suicide | Car Accident | Guilt | Death

Cast

Ewan McGregor	...	Dr. Sam Foster
Ryan Gosling	...	Henry Letham
Kate Burton	...	Mrs. Letham
Naomi Watts	...	Lila Culpepper
Elizabeth Reaser	...	Athena
Bob Hoskins	...	Dr. Leon Patterson
Janeane Garofalo	...	Dr. Beth Levy
B.D. Wong	...	Dr. Ren
John Tormey	...	Custodian / Piano Mover #1
José Ramón Rosario	...	Cabbie / Piano Mover #2 (as José Ramon Rosario)
Becky Ann Baker	...	Paramedic #1 / Butch Cook
Lisa Kron	...	Paramedic #2
Gregory Mitchell	...	Dance Instructor
John Dominici	...	Boy / Young Henry
Jessica Hecht	...	Boy's Mother

MPAA:

Rated R for language and some disturbing images.

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Australia:M | Mexico:B15 | Czech Republic:15 | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13 | Norway:15 | Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Finland:K-15 | Hungary:16 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | Canada:14+ (Ontario) | Iceland:16 | South Korea:15 | Spain:18 | Malaysia:U (DVD) | Brazil:14 | UK:15 (original rating) (cut) | UK:18 (video rating) (uncut) | USA:TV-MA (cable rating) | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Columbia University - Broadway & 116th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

New Regency Pictures

Trivia:

The Dream sequence of the falling down a spiral staircase was filmed in St. John's Cathedral in New York City.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: All of the books in the "bookstore" that Dr. Foster visits as he is trying to find Henry have library identification labels on their spines, revealing that the scene was actually shot in a public library (the 58th Street branch of the New York Public library in Manhattan, as it turns out).

Quotes:

Sam Foster: I've read your file.
Henry Letham: Well can I read your file?
Sam Foster: Tell me why you're here.
Henry Letham: I thought you read the file.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Writing the Music for 'Stay' (2006) (V)

Soundtrack:

Cold Water

the most underrated movie of 2005

Have you heard of Stay? If you're here you must have but I'll bet it wasn't too long ago that you found out about it. It's a movie that came out late last year with little fanfare, was dismissed as a poor movie by critics and quickly ushered back out of theaters.

It's a crying shame.

It was a wonderful movie. My favorite type of movies are psychological horror movies. Favorites include: Jacob's Ladder, Mulholland Dr., Donnie Darko, and in a similar realm, Momento and Fight Club. I love seeing a good representation of the human mind on film and that is exactly what this film shows so well.

It's about a college student (Ryan Gosling) who tells his shrink (Ewan McGregor) that he is going to kill himself on the stroke of midnight this Saturday, leaving his shrink to enlist the help of his formerly suicidal girlfriend (Naomi Watts) to figure out why he wants to kill himself and how to stop him, while his world falls apart.

It's directed by Marc Forster of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland fame. The movie has been called pretentious, shallow, ridiculous, bewildering, absurd, and empty by many reviewers. Personally I think that they didn't have the patience for it and/or were put off by its extravagant visuals and cuts. I thought it was great and deserves much more credit than it has received.

The movie's visual style is very interesting and jarring in a good way. It had me constantly saying to my girlfriend "did you see that?" Full of slight of the hand camera/editing tricks. Nearly everything in the movie is symbolic of other things or ideas in the movie. The acting is very good, especially among the lesser characters. Everything in the movie feels so unreal, but that is serves some purpose even if one couldn't know what it is right away. A second viewing would reveal many new things. In the end much of the movie is left up to interpretation and my girlfriend and I had a good conversation about our ideas on what things meant in the movie. After thinking about it for a day I'm pretty sure that I could explain everything in the movie, even what the hell is up with Ewan McGregor's pants, Why Gosling wanted to commit suicide and the twins and triplets.

It was fun was figuring out what the rest of the movie meant after seeing its end, the solution. The movie is like a code and the end is the decryption key. It differs from other "sixth sense" type surprise ending movies because everything you would see in the movie before the end would not act as a clue to what it all means or what the ending is. It's more like decrypting a diary than a problem with a solution to it.

Basically, any movie buff owes it to themselves to see this movie. I rented it but after seeing it I fully intend to purchase the DVD.