Review of Stay (2005) by Filipeneto — 02 May 2019

Hard to understand.

I confess that I did not fully understand this movie. Henry Letham survived a car accident and is accompanied by a psychiatrist, Sam Foster. But when he threatens to commit suicide and Sam tries everything to stop him, the psychiatrist himself begins to doubt his sanity.

Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling do a satisfying job in the lead roles. The director, Marc Forster, does a very competent job, especially with regard to the more technical aspects of the film. In fact, the film focuses heavily on an intentional dreamlike surrealism, where cinematic technique is used to accentuate it: scenes that repeat and repeat over and over, unusual shooting angles, with the camera focusing reflexes, distortions and image rotations, a soundtrack slightly atonal, a confusing script ... Really the problem of this film is the script being so strange and difficult to digest. Either you follow the movie step by step and you understand each step, or you end up lost, without noticing the end.