Stay (2005 film)

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Stay

Stay film poster
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by David Benioff
Starring Ewan McGregor
Naomi Watts
Ryan Gosling
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) October 21, 2005
Running time 99 min
Country USA USA
Language English
Budget $50,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Stay is an American film directed by Marc Forster and written by David Benioff. It stars Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling and Naomi Watts, with production by Regency and distribution by 20th Century Fox. The film represents intense relationships centering on reality, death, love and the afterlife. The film received mixed reviews by critics (receiving a solid 3 1/2 stars by Roger Ebert though only a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes), and did poorly at the box office.

Contents

[edit] Cast

[edit] Interpretations and speculations

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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Please note: This is a preliminary and highly speculative interpretation, and one which is still under development. Hopefully this will encourage the thinking process about the movie and further our overall understanding of the plot. Do not take these interpretations as concrete or verbatim, and feel free to build upon this section if you feel you have something to add or help clarify. Finally, do not read this section if you have not watched the movie, as it contains critical plot explorations that will detract from the experience of watching the movie for the first time!

For starters, it is clear that the entire movie takes place as Henry Letham is in the process of dying, or otherwise struggling to "decide" whether to continue to hold on to his life in spite of what has happened. When we take what we see in the final scene and apply it to the events of the movie, it can be deduced that Henry hears the voices of the people around him as he lies mortally wounded on the bridge and uses them to craft his dream world in which he supposedly makes his decision to live or die (assuming that he does indeed have a choice). All the characters in the film, in fact, turn out to either be people surrounding him as he dies, or those that were with him in the vehicle that crashed. To summarize, we can assume that the entire span of the movie elapses in the same period of time as the final scene. This scenario is very similar to the events of a short story by Ambrose Bierce called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

This theory is supported by many references throughout the film. For example when Leon miraculously gains sight, he declares that the Buddhists were right in saying that the world is an illusion. Additionally, Henry is obsessed with a fake artist by the name of Tristan Reveur, reveur being French for dreamer and triste being French for sad. Another possibility is that the distance between Athena and Henry in his dream world represents his knowledge or supposition that he is now forever separated from her in the real world regardless of whether or not he survives the ordeal.

Presuming this theory is accurate, the movie dances between notions of purgatory/hell/heaven and the simple inner-conversations of a dying man trying to come to terms with his life. He feels extreme guilt about "what he did" and is convinced he's on his way to hell, or already there.

Either way, the movie is leading up to the moment of truth, where he is either being judged, facing certain death, judging himself, or consciously making the choice of whether to live or die (this is left completely to the imagination by the film). When the movie finally arrives at the final scene, the car accident that fatally wounds him, the entire world becomes very visually unstable, until finally he dies. The world becomes relatively clear again, although some blurriness is still apparent. Notably, during this final scene, Sam is revealed to indeed be a doctor of some sort (not necessarily a psychiatrist). This would further suggest that whatever went on in Henry's subconscious had the real world interwoven within it, and perhaps even vice versa! This is lightly inferred shortly after Henry dies, when Sam, who shouldn't have any notion of what Henry had envisioned during this whole film, has brief memory flashes of times spent with Lila in the dream world. In Henry's world, Sam and Lila were a couple; but in the "real world", Sam and Lila met only while trying to save Henry's life after the accident.

Another aspect of the movie that must be explored is that all the individual characters would seem to exemplify various facets or direct representations of Henry's psyche, perhaps helping him either understand himself somehow, or otherwise attempting to sort out his emotions or desires. This theory is supported by numerous scenes in the movie; one example being the fact that we see Lila hanging up her paintings which all turn out to be signed as works by "Henry Letham". Along these lines it can also be said that Sam is a direct representation of Henry's desire to survive and forgive himself for what happened, whereas Henry himself represents the part of him that shoulders all of the blame and desires nothing more than to perish along with his family and girlfriend. This theory is supported by the numerous "interchange" scenes placed throughout the movie in which we see virtually seamless transitions from Sam to Henry and vice-versa, as well as the combative exchanges between them regarding his desire to commit suicide in his dream world. There are also several occasions of Sam being confused with Henry by various characters, including Lila herself. It's also debatable that Sam's hair and overall appearance are not too unlike Henry's. Another clue to this affect would be that you only see the two Chinese twins when both Henry and Sam are together in the shot.

It is also very much possible that in addition to, or instead of this theory, the movie plays on the Hindu theme (which has been played upon by others, such as The Matrix) of dreams within dreams, whereby the entire world is actually a part of a dream, whose dreamer is nothing but a dream character in yet another dream. This would be supported by the reference to the Buddhist "World is an illusion" idea.

Another aspect of the movie is that there are doubles and sometimes triples of the 'extras' in several scenes. In the scene in which Henry walks out of the Art lecture and meets Sam, soon after all the students come out as well and you can see several couples wearing the same clothing. This is also shown when two Chinese women are coming out of a cab that Sam goes into. This may be explained by Henry's limited 'resource' of people he can put into his 'dream'. For example, in the Art lecture there maybe over 200 students, but Henry has only a small audience to pull characters from, that are standing by the roadside watching him die. Also, a shiny silver briefcase is shown several times throughout the movie, but this is not explained, and neither is the 'balloon' that is going to 'balloon heaven' as commented by a character in Henry's dream. (Famous eastern philosopher Alan Watts, the night of his death, held a balloon and let it go, and commented that it was just like a soul drifting away. I don't believe the movie is referring to this, but I believe the balloon drifting away is a clear metaphor for "letting go")

An interesting note is right at the end of the movie. In Henry's dream, Sam meets Beth, who says 'I didn't move him' as in the 'real' life she was the first person on the scene and proclaimed that she didn't move him, because you're not supposed to move them. (In the dream-world she was a psychologist who tried to help Henry but gave up, and Henry feels betrayed by her) The interesting part is that her name is not revealed until the END of the movie when Henry is already dead. She tells police officers that her name is Elizabeth while he is being carried into the Ambulance - but his eyes are wide open. Whether this means that he was in fact conscious at that time, and whether this reflects a change in the time line of when he actually had a dream is all up for speculation.

One might notice the numerous references to Shakespeare's Hamlet. For example the first time Sam meets Athena, she's reciting Hamlet. The last name Letham is an anagram of Hamlet. Seeing ways the stories are connected can provide clues to unlocking the puzzle. (Coincidentally, "Stay" is the name of a song by an Irish pop band named "Shakespeare's Sister".)

Also, in the final scene of the movie while Henry is laying in the road, Lila is looking over him telling him to stay with her. During this time he asks her if she will marry him, as he was going to ask Athena but never got the chance to, further explaining the theory that the people in the 'real' world take after the people in Henry's dream world.

[edit] Connections to Hamlet

There are several times in the movie that William Shakespeare's play Hamlet is in some way referenced, and there are things in the movie that suggest that the play was an inspiration for the movie.

  • "Letham" is an anagram of "Hamlet"
  • Athena uses Hamlet's line, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
  • Athena is cast as Ophelia (who is doomed to die), but would rather be in Hamlet's shoes (debating death, as Henry is)
  • Sam's girlfriend Lila has tried to commit suicide. Hamlet's girlfriend Ophelia drowns in what may be a passive suicide.
  • Henry is freaked out when he sees his father's "ghost"
  • Athena says her favorite line in "Hamlet" is, "
HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
  • In Act II, Scene ii (the scene Athena reads with her Rosencrantz friend)
HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.
  • A play within a play theme.
  • Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" speech is the biggest key...
“

To be or not to be: that is the question —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep —
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch[1] and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered."[2]

 ”

[edit] Quotations

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  • "Bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art, because it documents human failure." - Henry Letham, quoting the imaginary artist Tristan Reveur.
  • "An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art." - Lila, quoting Tristan Reveur.
  • "The day I did it, I brought two razors to the bathtub, because I knew I would get too weak and drop one, and I didn't want to lay there half finished. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine hating your life so much, that you bring a backup razor?" - Lila
  • "There's too much beauty to quit." - Lila
  • "Tell me I'm good...Tell me they'll remember me..." - Lila
  • "If this is a dream, the whole world is inside it." - Sam
  • "Your troubles will cease and fortune will smile upon you." - Henry
Henry Letham: I burned myself.
Sam Foster: You burned yourself? Why?
Henry Letham: Practicing for hell.
Sam Foster: Why do you think you're going to hell?
Henry Letham: Because of what I did. Because of what I'm gonna do.
Sam Foster: What are you going to do? [beat] You're going to try to kill yourself? And how serious should I take this threat?
Henry Letham: Saturday at midnight. It's what I'm going to do.
Sam Foster: Okay, you've gotta know that everything just changed, if you talk to me about suicide I'm required to take certain actions.
Henry Letham: Wait, just deal with him, and, we'll talk about it next time.
Sam Foster: There's a next time?
Henry Letham: Yeah. Yeah, we got three days.
Lila Culpepper: Henry, forgetting something? [Sam turns around, confused] 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.
Sam Foster: [gesturing to the surrounding paintings on display] Are any of these yours?
Henry Letham: Ouch.
Sam Foster: What?
Henry Letham: Well... these are bad, Sam.
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.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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