Stay is an
mystery filmMystery film is a sub-genre of the more general category of crime film. It focuses on the efforts of the Detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of a crime by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction....
directed by
Marc ForsterMarc Forster is a German-Swiss filmmaker and screenwriter, known for films such as Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction, and Quantum of Solace.- Life and career :...
and written by
David BenioffDavid Benioff in New York City) is an American writer.- Early life :Born David Friedman, he changed his name to David Benioff, his mother's maiden name. He is the youngest of three, with 2 sisters, Suzy Cohen, and Caroline Levy. Benioff is a Dartmouth College alumnus...
. It stars
Ewan McGregorEwan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor, singer, and adventurer who has had success in mainstream, indie and art house films...
,
Ryan GoslingRyan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his roles in The Notebook, The Believer, Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl.-Early life:...
,
Bob HoskinsRobert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor, known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, and for his performances in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Hook , and Super Mario Bros. .-Early life:Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England,...
and
Naomi WattsNaomi Ellen Watts is a British-Australian actress. Watts began her career in Australian Television, where she appeared in commercials and series, including the soap opera Home and Away, the award winning mini-series Brides of Christ and the family sitcom Hey Dad..!...
, with production by
RegencyNew Regency Productions is a production company founded in 1991 by Arnon Milchan and a subsidiary of Regency Enterprises.It is located on the 20th Century Fox lot, and Fox is the current distributor of Regency releases since 1998, but is a wholly independent company. Warner Bros. Pictures was the...
and distribution by
20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation , also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox, is one of the six major American film studios...
. The film represents intense relationships centering on
realityReality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist." Literally, the term denotes what is real; in its widest sense, this includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to...
,
deathDeath is the termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical...
,
loveLove is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction...
and the
afterlifeThe afterlife is the idea that the consciousness or mind of a being continues after physical death occurs. In many popular views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual or immaterial realm. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics...
.
Plot summary
The movie opens with a car crash on
Brooklyn BridgeThe Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretching 5,989 feet over the East River, connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn...
, and introduces Henry Letham (
Ryan GoslingRyan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his roles in The Notebook, The Believer, Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl.-Early life:...
), apparently a survivor of the crash, sitting next to a burning car on the bridge.
Psychiatrist Sam Foster (
Ewan McGregorEwan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor, singer, and adventurer who has had success in mainstream, indie and art house films...
) and his girlfriend Lila (
Naomi WattsNaomi Ellen Watts is a British-Australian actress. Watts began her career in Australian Television, where she appeared in commercials and series, including the soap opera Home and Away, the award winning mini-series Brides of Christ and the family sitcom Hey Dad..!...
) are then introduced in a new scene. Sam discusses his patient, Henry, a college student and aspiring artist whom he describes as depressed and paranoid. Sometimes Henry hears voices, and he seems able to predict future events. Henry has told Sam that he will kill himself that Saturday at midnight, which Sam finds very troubling. Lila, an art teacher who has survived a past suicide attempt, offers to help to dissuade Henry from killing himself. But first they must find Henry.
Sam investigates Henry's circumstances in an effort to help. Henry claims to have killed both of his parents, but Sam finds that Henry's mother appears to be alive. Sam visits Henry's mother but finds her living in a bare house, confused about Sam's identity (she insists that he is Henry) and refuses to respond to her questions. Henry's mother insists on feeding Sam, but when she opens the fridge it is completely empty, and then her dog bites Sam.
At the clinic to have his arm bandaged, Sam discusses the visit with a police officer who is curious as to why he would visit that house. Sam reveals that she started to bleed from a head wound during his conversation with Henry's mother. The police officer tells him that the woman who lived there is dead. This seems to send Sam into a fugue in which the same scene is repeated several times.
Later Sam contacts a waitress (
Elizabeth ReaserElizabeth Ann Reaser is an American film, television, and stage actress. Her work includes the films Stay, The Family Stone, and Twilight and the TV series Saved, Grey's Anatomy and The Ex-List.-Early life:...
) with whom Henry had fallen in love. She is an aspiring actress and he meets her at a script reading where she is reading lines with another man. She agrees to take him to Henry, but after a long trip down winding staircases he loses her. When he gets back to the rehearsal room, she is there reading the same lines as when he first met her.
The search continues until 11:33 pm on Saturday, less than half an hour before Henry plans to kill himself. At a bookshop known to have been frequented by Henry, Sam finds a painting that Henry had painted and bartered for books about Henry's favorite artist. He learns that the artist had killed himself on Brooklyn Bridge, on his twenty-first birthday. Henry's twenty-first birthday is Sunday, and Sam realizes that Henry plans to commit suicide on Brooklyn Bridge in imitation of the artist.
Sam finds Henry on Brooklyn Bridge in a physical atmosphere that is increasingly unraveling. Sam turns away as Henry puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.
The car crash of the first scene is then reprised. Henry was fatally wounded in the crash but, in his last moments, is suffering
survivor guiltSurvivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself or herself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event. It may be found among survivors of combat and natural disaster, and in non-mortal situations among those whose...
. Each of the characters introduced earlier in the movie was in fact a random spectator at the site of the crash, including Sam, a doctor, and Lila, a nurse, who treat Henry in an attempt to save him. They fail, and Henry dies, but not before appearing to get some relief when Lila, whom he believes to be his girlfriend, says she will marry him.
The entire movie up until Henry's death had existed in his mind, in his last moments (a plot device used most famously in the short story
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians...
). Before parting, Sam appears to get a flash in his mind of the experiences between him and Lila that Henry had constructed, and asks Lila out for coffee.
Cast
- Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor, singer, and adventurer who has had success in mainstream, indie and art house films...
as Dr. Sam Foster
- Naomi Watts
Naomi Ellen Watts is a British-Australian actress. Watts began her career in Australian Television, where she appeared in commercials and series, including the soap opera Home and Away, the award winning mini-series Brides of Christ and the family sitcom Hey Dad..!...
as Lila Culpepper
- Ryan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his roles in The Notebook, The Believer, Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl.-Early life:...
as Henry Letham
- Bob Hoskins
Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor, known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, and for his performances in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Hook , and Super Mario Bros. .-Early life:Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England,...
as Dr. Leon Patterson
- Janeane Garofalo
Janeane Garofalo is an American stand-up comedian, actress, political activist, writer, and former co-host on Air America Radio's The Majority Report...
as Dr. Beth Levy
- B.D. Wong
Bradley Darryl “B.D.” Wong is an American Tony Award-winning actor, best-known for his roles as Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as Father Ray Mukada on HBO's Oz, and for his starring role as Song Liling in the Broadway production of M...
as Dr. Ren
- Elizabeth Reaser
Elizabeth Ann Reaser is an American film, television, and stage actress. Her work includes the films Stay, The Family Stone, and Twilight and the TV series Saved, Grey's Anatomy and The Ex-List.-Early life:...
as Athena
- Amy Sedaris
Amy Sedaris is an American actress, author and comedienne. She is perhaps best known for playing the character Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central television series Strangers with Candy. Sedaris regularly collaborates with her older brother, humorist and author David Sedaris...
as Toni
- Mark Margolis
Mark Margolis is an American actor, who has been making movies since 1976.Margolis went to Temple University briefly before moving to New York City, where he studied drama with Stella Adler and at the Actors Studio...
Visual style
Marc Forster's directorial style is artistic, referencing many other films including
VertigoVertigo is a American psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor and based on a novel by Boileau-Narcejac...
. Details such as the length of a character's trousers and what he is wearing on his feet are significant, too. Forster has spoken of the film's stylistic link to the films of
Nicolas RoegNicolas Jack Roeg, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer. Contributing to the visual look of Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death, and co-directing Performance, he would later become the guiding force behind such landmark films as Walkabout, Don't Look...
.
There are what appear to be continuity mistakes, which are in fact tied into the plot. However, there are some genuine continuity errors in the film, such as when a character's beard changes length between shots.
Reception
Critical reaction to
Stay has been mixed. The film holds a 27% on
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films. The name derives from the historical cliché of throwing tomatoes and other produce at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad.- History :...
and 41 out of 100 on
MetacriticMetacritic is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
.
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter.He is known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
of the
Chicago Sun-TimesThe Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is owned by the Sun-Times Media Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection on March 31, 2009.-History:...
gave the film 3½ stars out of four, saying, "The ending is an explanation, but not a solution. For a solution we have to think back through the whole film, and now the visual style becomes a guide. It is an illustration of the way the materials of life can be shaped for the purposes of the moment."
Peter TraversPeter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.The magazine was named after the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same...
also praised the film, awarding it three stars out of four and saying, "Some people find this twisty and twisted psychological thriller arty and pretentious. I find it arty and provocative."
James BerardinelliJames Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Biography:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and spent his early childhood in Morristown. At the age of nine, he moved to Cherry Hill. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 through 1990, obtaining both a BS and...
of
ReelViews gave
Stay 2½ stars out of four, calling it "interesting" but finding it "hard to recommend to anyone but the small cadre of
David LynchDavid Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker and visual artist. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for The Elephant Man , Blue Velvet , and Mulholland Drive . He also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man...
devotees who will inhale anything with a whiff of similarity to their favorite auteur's scent." Lisa Schwarzbaum of
Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books and popular culture. Unlike celebrity-focused publications US Weekly, People, and In Touch Weekly, EWs primary concentration is on entertainment...
gave the film a "C", praising the "profuse imagery" but ultimately feeling it to be "a tepid film" with "flat characters" and "anchorless performances".
Lou LumenickLouis J. Lumenick is an American film critic. He is the chief film critic for the New York Post and has reviewed films there since 1999.-Life and career:Lumenick was born and raised in Astoria, Queens...
of the
New York PostThe New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
panned the film, calling it "a trite, incoherent and pretentious bomb."