Posted: 10/25/2005

Stay

(2005)

by Anna Keizer

Upon exiting the theatre after watching Stay, a friend said to me, “It’ll take me twenty years to figure out what I just saw.” That sounds about right.

Stay is not your usual Hollywood fare. Whereas other films might gently take you by the hand and lead you through the next ninety minutes, Stay blindfolds you, spins you in a circle and then pushes you into nowhere. You don’t know what the hell is going on or where you are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Where do I even start with this one? Okay… a clinical psychiatrist, Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) gets put on a case with a college student, Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling), who informs Sam that he will be committing suicide in three days. Desperate to stop him, Sam subsequently scours New York City, trying to find people and clues as to why Henry is so intent on ending his life. Complicating matters is the fact that Sam’s girlfriend, Lila (Naomi Watts), is a suicide survivor. While she insists that she can help Henry- after all, she understands what he’s going through- Sam refuses to discuss it with her. He claims doctor-patient privilege, but in fact Sam still fears that Lila may one day try to take her own life again.

So anyway, as Sam runs around town, occasionally bumping into Henry himself, strange things start to happen. Sam visits Henry’s mother, only to be told an hour later by police that she has been dead for several months. Henry himself admits to killing his parents, but then is astonished to see his father talking to Sam. Of course, Sam thinks Henry is hallucinating, insisting that the man is merely an associate of his, not Mr. Letham. Later on, Sam breaks into Henry’s apartment with the intention of institutionalizing him. Henry is nowhere to be found, but there is a message on his answering machine. Unmistakably, it is Sam’s voice. It sounds as if he is trying to calm Henry down. Sam, however, denies ever leaving such a message. So, just what is going on here?

It’s a question that I’m not sure I can answer. And before I go any further, the cinematography in this film must be mentioned. Depending on how you look at it, the camera work perfectly compliments the enigmatic narrative- or it just makes it that much more confusing. Or both. Faces and places are morphing in nearly every scene, making it nearly impossible to follow the film in a conventional way. Eventually, you just have to throw up your hands and let your senses take over from where your rational mind has shut down.

Anyway, I still haven’t mentioned what I think this film is all about. Honestly, I’ve been pondering it for days. Then I realized something… After watching the film, my friend and I started discussing stories we had read about what happens, whether in the physical world or within one’s mind, just before a person’s death. It’s not necessary to reveal what happened to whom and why, because by the time the credits roll, you’re not sure if anything in the last two hours was real. The importance of the film, though, lies in its ambiguity. Who knows for sure what really happens when we die? Whether the cause of death is traumatic or not, perhaps it becomes a moment where the mind is just trying to make sense of it all, trying to register the change that both our bodies and souls are experiencing. Perhaps our perception may not be a faithful reflection of what is actually occurring, maybe we cannot handle the truth of the circumstances, and so our mind finds an alternate reality so that we may meet death with some sort of peace.

So… does any of that make sense? No? Fine. I suppose you’re just going to have to see the movie for yourself.

Anna Keizer is a film critic and screenwriter living in Los Angeles.

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