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 | New York City | Balloon

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
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:

At one point, David Fincher was attached to direct.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When, Leon (Henry's father) was talking to Sam after his eyes opened, he said that "The first time I can see everything" and also "I always thought you have brown eyes". If a man didn't see anything in his entire life (he is blind), how can he know colors?

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:

These Eyes

A New Kind of Film

It is a truism that film, as a photographic medium, intrinsically resists the psychological. In the hands of a less gifted director, this would have been equally true of STAY, despite its overt plot in which a professor of psychiatry struggles to find a psychological clue in order to prevent a young artist from committing suicide at a precise time and location the artist has planned.

But without altering this plot as written, director Marc Forster has invented an editing style (combined with a rigorous control of transitions and point of view) to create nothing less than a parallel plot to the film, in which the professor must contend with the horror of his own descent into full-blown psychosis.

Since the director conveys this parallel plot entirely through visual means, and within the point of view of the hero of the story, its consequences are all the more disconcerting, and we feel the terror of the realization of losing one's mind more acutely than in any previous screen depiction of madness I have seen.

Much as the young artist's psychotic identity implicitly consumes the identity of his psychiatrist, so does the visual plot consume the overt, written plot of the film, like an unconscious motivation that overcomes a conscious one. By succeeding with such an ambitious design, Forster has invented a new kind of film in which the psychological, in all its frightening depths, finally becomes visible.