Stay

You know those movies that are impossible to understand, that you think is something but other people think is something totally different, and maybe it's both, or maybe none. Donnie Darko is like that, but overall you know what really happened there. Not with Stay, a mindfuck thriller from director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) and writer David Benioff (25th Hour, Troy) that is very confusing until the ending, when it becomes less confusing but you're still not sure what happened. If you can live with watching a story you won't understand, watch this movie, because everything else is excellent.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor as Sam Foster, a psychiatrist filling in for a colleague whose patient is Ryan Goslin who plays Henry Latham, a young man in crisis who after rejecting Sam when they first meet, comes back and tells him he will kill himself at midnight on Saturday, so Sam has 4 days to help him. The story is about Sam, but also about Henry, maybe because they are the same person, maybe not. They could also be Lila, played by Naomi Watts, who is Sam's artist girlfriend, and former patient. She tried to kill herself years ago but Sam saved her, and they've been together ever since, and they love each other, but Sam still doesn't trust her and feels she could do it again. Sam talks about them while playing chess with Bob Hoskins who plays Dr. Leon Patterson, a blind man who could be Henry's father, even though Henry's father is dead. Sam also looks for advice from his colleague Dr. Ren (B.D. Wong) and from Janeane Garofalo who plays Dr. Beth Levy, Henry's regular psychiatrist.
And just to throw more names in there, Kate Burton plays Henry's mother who Sam talks to one night before being attacked by a dog, even though both Henry's mom and the dog have been dead for a while, and then Amy Sedaris plays a secretary in a 10 seconds scene.

What happens between all of them is too much to explain, or maybe just unexplainable, but is fine, because what's great about the movie is the work by Forster behind the camera, and is postproduction. Forster, cinematographer Roberto Schaefer, and film editor Matt Chesse, make Stay a visual feast. There's crazy camera work, there are geometrical movements and repeated sequences. There's an amazing background work with the locations and is even better if you look at the extras, yes, those people on camera that are not the stars of the movie. And the transitions between scenes are insane. There's frequently used stuff like a character opening a door which transform into an elevator door, but then there's stuff like a window getting closed that morphs into a transparent water tank that turns out to be an aquarium.

There's nothing else I can say about the movie, because even if I were to spoil the ending, which I won't, I wouldn't be explaining the movie anyway. What I can do is recommend it, because the acting is great, and everything that is not the acting is even better. And I don't even want somebody to explain Stay to me, because it would lose its mystique, and I'm in love with what I know and tried to understand, even if I didn't.