Stay
by Marc Forster
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Actor: Elizabeth Reaser, Ewan McGregor, Kate Burton, Naomi Watts, Ryan GoslingDirector: Marc Forster
Brand: MCGREGOR,EWAN
Cinematographer: Roberto Schaefer
Producer: Arnon Milchan
Producer: Bill Carraro
Producer: Eric Kopeloff
Producer: Guymon Casady
Producer: Tom Lassally
Writer: David Benioff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
Published: 2006-03-01
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-28
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Stay
DVD Review: Spirit Matters
Summary: 4 Stars
Stay startles the senses, challenges reason, and stretches the imagination. Director Marc Forster's film opens with a nighttime glimpse of a passenger car, smiling faces, and an engagement ring. Just as you piece together the happy event, it is obliterated by a horrendous automobile accident on the Brooklyn Bridge. In a flurry, the camera pans your view away from the dimly lit, rain soaked carnage to a young man standing, incomprehensively, over the wreckage.
Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling, in a genuinely riveting performance) is a college student and aspiring artist. He is the tragedy's sole survivor. Devastated, you sense his guilt and disappointment. Poised at the cusp of adulthood, Henry threatens to take his life in three days, at midnight, on his 21st birthday, just like one of his role models from a previous age. Seeking help from his therapist, Dr. Beth Levy (Janeane Garafolo, her usual quirky and effecive self), he finds Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor, plucky and intelligent), in her stead. Sam's concern and curiosity over Henry's suicidal predilections and uncanny ability to predict unusual weather phenomena incites him to investigate the young man's background and relationships. His inquiry intensifies into an obsession, which troubles Sam's live-in girlfriend, Lila Culpepper (Naomi Watts, handling yet another complex role expertly). She bears the brunt of his deteriorating mental condition. Lila, like Henry, is an artist, but also an art professor. Before becoming his lover, Lila was Sam's patient. In her darkest hour, when she thought she hated life so much that she included a backup razor to slit her wrists, Lila found enough beauty in the world to stay her hand.
At this point in the film, you may be wondering, "What is it with writer David Benieoff and these characters?"
Many have interpreted Sam and Lila as refracted images of Henry's conglomerate personality, composites of his masculine and feminine self, desperately working together to save his life. After all, there was the time Lila called Sam, "Henry," to Sam's dismay! However, reality in Stay is prismatic--lucid in its elements, and fleeting and dissonant in its construction. Scenes morph deciduously into each other like the discordant brushstrokes of the impressionist artwork that is poignantly portrayed. Stay assuredly opens itself to subjective interpretation--especially over its sublime aspects.
There is much to recommend in this film. Fascinating incongruities and similarities in the characters' perceptions of each other distinguish it from other films in the genre. In one scene, for instance, Sam and Henry interact with the same sightless individual (Bob Hoskins, in studied excellence). Concomitantly, this person is Sam's colleague, Dr. Leon Patterson, but also Henry's father, Mr. Lethem, who Henry thinks he has murdered! In another scene, Sam and Henry confront each other in roiled fury, conversing in the same dialogue.
As in some recent films, viewers are exposed to reinforced, emblematic images. We see, for instance, multiple sets of human twins (even triplets) and other "doubles," including an aquarium showcasing paired walruses. Also noteworthy is the geometric precision in featured architecture. A spiral staircase figures prominently in one scene. Reminiscent of the RNA helix, it is the place where Sam loses pace with Henry's fiancée, Athena (Elizabeth Reaser), whom he tracks to her college theater.
Sam's provocative visit to Henry's Long Island home, yields an otherworldly encounter with his mother, Mrs. Lethem (Kate Burton, eerily stoic), and her distrustful dog, which does not leave Sam unscathed! All this, however, contradicts the tragic family history, recounted by a disbelieving Sheriff Kennelly (Michael Gaston). Another memorable scene finds Henry popping into one of New York City's sleazy peep shows, where he voyeuristically peers through a bevy of undulating, leggy pole-dancers onto a flickering flat panel that randomly shuffles through a montage of his life's photos.
At the film's conclusion, we return to the controversial scene of Henry's automobile accident. Many characters re-appear as onlookers. The camera pans the wreckage and lingers briefly over the bodies, confirming a few suspicions. This time, Henry lies prone on the street, clearly dying. A nurse tends to him, helplessly. She is Lila Culpepper, who appears to Henry as the corporeal echo of Athena, his lost love. As his life fades, Lila can do no more for Henry than tearfully assent to his labored proposal of marriage. If Henry cannot "stay," as Lila hopes, then something spiritual indeed has survived his mercurial trek between life and death. Ancient Hermetic and Egyptian adepts believed in Duat, the twilight netherworld journeyed by souls who, in life, travail to find gnosis, the knowledge needed to re-ascend heaven and achieve perfect Unity. Lila's promise of eternal love to Henry was his epiphany, the ultimate act of "beauty" in the world that willed Henry not to take his own life--even if he had to lose it. As the ancients knew it, love--not suicide, not self-sacrifice--was the promised path to salvation, the knowledge needed to free oneself from the lamentable cycle of corrupt material confinement. At the magical moment of Lila's consent, a recovered memory flashed across the mind of Dr. Sam Foster. It was a wondrous glimpse of a loving relationship, kindled in another dimension--some call it déjà vu. Having replaced Beth Levy as a qualified responder at the accident scene, Sam found himself at the right place, at the right time, to impulsively ask a heartbroken nurse, a lovely stranger and compatriot "guardian angel," to join him for a cup of coffee, to help pass an unbearable night. Miraculously, Lila Culpepper consented and they departed together, embarked toward a better destiny.
Description of Stay
A psychologist begins to lose touch with reality as he attempts to help a suicidal college student.Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 5-FEB-2007
Media Type: DVD
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