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Ewan McGregor and Janeane Garofalo play doctors looking for insights into a suicidal patient in "Stay."Review
'Stay' spins an impassable tale
A top-notch director and quality actors fail to make this film worth watching.
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If you want to feel alternately frustrated, confused, bored and exasperated, "Stay" is the movie for you. If you want to be entertained, satisfied or intellectually stimulated toward any good purpose, stay away from "Stay."
Hold on here! This is a movie directed by Marc Forster, the guy who did "Monster's Ball" and "Finding Neverland." It stars Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling and Naomi Watts, three near surefire actors. How bad can it be?
Pretty bad. "Stay" is one of those movies that let you know early on that nothing is as it seems. It may all be a dream, it may all be one man's hallucination, some monster telepath may be twisting minds, heck, there might even be ghosts involved. But we're not dealing with reality. And then you wait around for the last 10 minutes of the movie for some explanation.
First off, to make such a movie work you need one whale of an explanation, and "Stay" doesn't have one. Yes, it makes sense, but it's not particularly astounding. More importantly, though, the film has to feel like it's moving forward in some way, even in its alternate reality.
"Stay" is filled with shots of swirling circular staircases that seem to descend to nowhere. And those images are simply too appropriate. The movie goes nowhere.
The set-up is fairly simple.
McGregor plays psychiatrist Sam Foster. At the film's beginning he meets troubled art student Henry Letham (Gosling), who soon enough announces he will be committing suicide at midnight in a few days. Sam discusses this with his girlfriend, Lila (Watts), who once attempted suicide. And then he sets about trying to dissuade Henry from making a fatal decision.
The movie is just starting to roll when it becomes apparent the world is topsy-turvy. Sets of people walk by in identical clothing, the same faces show up playing different characters, time seems to shift and characters meld.
It's somewhat appealing at first -- Forster has always been handy with a camera -- but then it just starts spinning around. And around. And around.
As a result of the apparent disconnect, it's impossible to invest in any of the characters. Why bother when chances are they're not who they (only barely) appear to be?
It's sort of hard to care about a character that may only be a mirage.
"Stay" isn't so much a movie as a film exercise. The actors spend most of their time trying to build something out of nothing and Forster, working off David Benioff's maddening script, gets to play with fanciful lighting and surreal switches in all sorts of ways that must have seemed interesting to him.
They won't to the viewer. "Stay" is a cheap trick. Avoid it.
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The Detroit News.
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