Stay (2005/I)

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:

Surreal | Stairwell | Hailstorm | Blow Out | Walrus

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

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

South Korea:15 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Argentina:13 | Singapore:PG | Netherlands:12 | Spain:18 | Australia:M | Malaysia:U (DVD) | Norway:15 | Brazil:14 | Germany:12 | Czech Republic:15 | Mexico:B15 | Iceland:16 | Canada:14+ (Ontario) | UK:18 (video rating) (uncut) | UK:15 (original rating) (cut) | Hungary:16 | Finland:K-15 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | 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: The answering machine in Henry's apartment has "Digital Answering Machine" printed on it yet when the new message is played it sounds like a cassette tape rewinding before the message is actually played. Digital answering machines do not have tapes to rewind so there should be no taped rewinding sound.

Quotes:

Lila Culpepper: Henry, forgetting something?
[Sam turns around towards Lila looking confused]
Lila Culpepper: What's the matter?
Sam Foster: You just called me Henry.
Lila Culpepper: Baby, I think I know your name by now
Sam Foster: Yeah, but you called me Henry.
Lila Culpepper: Sam, I know who you are. I promise.

Movie Connections:

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

Soundtrack:

Aleph 2

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.