MovieChat Forums > Stay (2005) Discussion > You Guys Are Ignoring The Suicide

You Guys Are Ignoring The Suicide


If the entire film is Henry having a near-death experience, what's the point of the whole suicid angle? Why would someone have that kind of experience? Or, more appropriately, why would a writer want to put an audience through that experience.

The more obvious and less interesting explanation is that Sam was a witness o the crash, was traumatized by it, and then created a multipl-personality out of Henry. He'd been so moved by the crash that he found everything out that he could about him, hence why he knew what he did. Also, any scene between Henry and Sam never involves anyone else, except a blind man. And, because he's distraught and feels he must atone for not saving Henry, Sam returns to the scene of the accident where his imagined Henry threatens to commit suicide. If this imagined Henry commits suicide it will be the end of Sam. So, when Henry pulls the trigger in the end, that's Sam killing himself.

But this theory is somewhat shot out of the water by the way the blind man is later given sight and sees Henry and makes a distinction between Sam and Henry...it's just downright confusing...and if it is a near-death experience, while it's better than the standard split personality, it's slightly ludicrous because no one in that situation would look at Sam and then develope an entire plot in their mind where Sam has a girlfriend and then investigates Henry's life and speaks to a dead mother and a dead dog and such. It's just...hard to believe.

It's a shame because I really enjoyed the movie, it's very well made and very cool. But through the last forty minutes I was dissapointed because the clearest, simplest explanation is multiple-personality and that's overdone, but then in the end nothing is explained, which in a way I like, but at the same time I really want to understand the movie and feel like an idiot because I can't.

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I can't really agree with the idea of multiple personality. for that to be pulled off in this movie, we should have seen sam lying on the ground i think.

We start out in the movie thinking the main character is Sam (Ewan) and we don't understand until later that the entire movie was imagined from this dying boy, henry. Henry's brain, trying to survive, made illogical connections trying to make sense of what was happening to him. Not ludicrous at all- he's mixing the flashbacks of his life with what is going on around him.

the suicide angle is imminent death for henry. It's going to happen, henry knows it's going to happen and he thinks he's going to hell because he killed the people he loves.
keep in mind, you may have been more disappointed had the movie ended the way you expected.
If i don't understand a movie, it makes me want to watch it over and over again. It think it makes a much more successful movie than one you only need to see once and don't consider seeing again to understand it.



You have the power to make this life free and beautiful... a wonderful adventure! Charlie Chaplin

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Thank you for offering that explanation. I just watched the film and found it all very confusing. Your explanation is the one that makes the most sense to me.

Go take a step outside - see what's shaking in the real world.

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Yes!
I think Henry's subconscious wants death (Symbolized by desire to commit suicide) because he knows what has happened to his Love and his parents. But I didn't think of him pulling the trigger, I saw that moment as him coming around/coming to and hearing Dr. Foster tell him that he saw the whole thing, and that there was nothing Henry could have done. This enables Henry to feel at peace before he dies.

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Just watched it myself, thank you. I'd like to watch it again, using your explanations. Very helpful, thanks again.

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the movie takes place in henry's subconcious state of mind, while he's laying there on the ground, if he chooses to kill himself in his mind, which he does then his body in real life will die, but if he doesnt then he'll make it.

The tagline of the movie is You can't stay between the living and the dead. Henry chose that he did not want to live because of the fact he killed his parents so his body did not make it. (his choice was when he decided to kill himself in his head thats when his body died)

anyways thats what i think!

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there is no multiple peronality at all, every character thats in the movie was at the scene of the crime thats how they got into his head. the movie, besides the end does not take place in real life.

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Henry does NOT die at the end of the film. It is left open whether or not he will live or die. In real life, a body bag is zipped up over the head of a dead body, not the case here. When he is put into the ambulance, his eyes are open and he has one blue eye and one brown eye. If you paid attention, you would pick up on the idea that a character who has blue eye is DEAD. Brown eyes means alive.
when he shoots himself on the bridge, he is consciously ending his hallucination, not killing himself. He knows that he's making the illusion up and wants to end it because it's too painful.

After he shoots himself in the illusion, he ends the hallucination and his mind is now conscious of the real/physical world.

HE DOES NOT DIE AT THE END. HE MUST STILL DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT LIFE IS WORTH LIVING WITHOUT HIS PARENTS AND FIANCE.

AWESOME MOVIE!

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Phildeaerly i have to disagree about henry not dying, your point about the body bags is relevant in reality but in the background you can clearly see that the other passengers (who we know are dead) are also not zipped up in their bags either. Also the mixed eye color strikes me as more of a comment on the fragile line between life and death rather than a comment on weather he lives or dies. my take He dies.
Mark

so this is it we are going to die

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[deleted]

Well if he wasn't dead / there was any possibility of him living... they wouldn't have put him in the body bag at all.

It was probably the directors choice to leave it unzipped just so he could show the one brown/one blue eye.

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I think the brown/blue eye is a symbol of Sam/Henry being the same person in the "hallucination" (Sam has blue eyes/Henry has brown). It's also a symbol of Lila/Athena being the same person (i.e, co-mingled throughout).

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Ahh Thank you so much. That explains the king/moose thing too now to me..


Nice chaplin quote btw, Krispy. :)

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Didn't anyone catch that the close-up of the eyes showed that his pupils were fixed and dilated? That happens at death.

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ill tell you why i think you are wrong. i actually warmed to this movie because i have dreams ( which i remember ). When you are in your subconcious state your dreams are very well linked to the reality around you. Once i slept late ......in the day i heard my wake up alarm ringing and kept dreaming that i was back in school days hearing my lunch break finish bell ringing which i wanted to ignore becaause i did not want to go to class. And guess what - i woke up a half hour late. Once i had my bladder full and dreamt that i was going from house to house searching for a toilet.

i know that the stimuli around you makes you dream - and i think its Henry's dying dream. Because Henry was subconcious, Sam was not

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You are so right. I use a radio alarm set to a morning talk show. Sometimes after the radio comes on, I fall back to sleep. I will often have dreams that are animations of the discussion that is really going on on the radio. The dream itself will not be illustrating that discussion EXACTLY, it's more like my mind is interpreting the conversation. Hard to explain, but I think it could be the explanation for what was going on in Henry's mind while he lingered between life and death.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLxlyTrAC4
occurrence at owl creek

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Never have I ever (like ever) seen someone get the point of a film so wrong. Respect to you, TKnight_1! Gimme a synopsis for Men in Black now and how the whole movie is about immigrant crime in modern America.





With your feet on the air and your head on the ground, try this sig with spinach, yeah!

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Because in his half-conscious state he felt awful n' guilty being aware that his parents/Athena were killed in a crash of the car he was driving.

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