In the space between desire and fear, between reality and illusion, between life and death lies a whole other alternate world that is brought to life in the mind-bending thriller STAY.
Release Date: October 21, 2005 Studio: 20th Century Fox Director: Marc Forster
Screenwriter: David Benioff Starring: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Hoskins Genre: Thriller MPAA Rating: R (for language and some disturbing images) Official Website: Staythemovie.com
MPAA: Rated R for language and some disturbing images. Runtime: 99 min
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SYNOPSIS
In the space between desire and fear, between reality and illusion, between life and death lies a whole other alternate world that is brought to life in the mind-bending thriller STAY. From the acclaimed director of the award-winning Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland, Marc Forster, comes this moving and mesmerizing double story that plunges beneath the surface of ordinary experience to take a man on a spiraling descent through the mysteries of identity, dreams and the very fabric of existence.
STAY appears at face value to be the suspenseful story of dedicated New York psychiatrist Sam Foster (EWAN McGREGOR) and his urgent attempt to stop a secretive and unusual young patient he inherited, Henry Lethem (RYAN GOSLING), from carrying out a planned suicide on the eve of his 21st birthday. But behind the primary tale of STAY lies a far more unsettling and surreal mystery: that of the reality-shattering effect that investigating Henry starts to have on Sam. As Sam is drawn deeper into the web of Henry’s life -- and then into the labyrinth of his subconscious -- at first it simply puts stress on Sam’s relationship with his artist girlfriend and former patient Lila (NAOMI WATTS). But soon Sam’s own tightly-held grip on the rational world begins to melt away. Faced with increasingly surreal encounters and a Manhattan transformed into a wildly shifting dreamscape, Sam can no longer figure out what is true and what is happening only in his head, nor where he begins and Henry ends.
So just who is Henry Lethem and why is he fracturing Sam’s reality so profoundly?
As clues and suspense simultaneously build to the story’s climax on the Brooklyn Bridge, both Sam -- and the audience -- must grapple with thought-provoking questions about perception, awareness, forgiveness and final moments of redemption. For it soon becomes clear that what is happening to Sam and Henry is taking place not in this world but in the twilight state between living and dying . . . a place where no one can stay for long.
With STAY, director Marc Forster creates a truly psychologically-based thriller -- forging an intensely symbolic and hypnotically visual world of dreams, delusions and the most unsettling states of mind human beings ever experience.
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