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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You know TKnight_1, you're stupid. You feel like an idiot because you are one, and most of your stupidity comes from your unjustified arrogance, seen in threads like this one and like this other one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302674/board/thread/125269458?d=125269458 #125269458

You feel entitled to call people idiots when you can't even get the evident point of the film. You managed to get it COMPLETELY wrong and then call it "obvious". And worse of all, a few lines later you realize your "obvious" explanation makes no sense at all, and then you still hold on to it.

Who are you to say what a person would do in the situation Henry was in? I suggest you go get killed and then try to come back and let us know what went through your mind right before.

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I've seen this movie several times this week, and I think its pretty clear why he wants to kill himself. He is feeling guilt for the crash, he keeps saying "forgive me" because he thinks the crash is his fault. You can assume that he was out with his family (on his 21st birthday) and he might have had a little to drink, so he blamed the crash on himself. This is why he says he "killed his parents", because he thought his intoxication had caused it.

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A near-death experience is when someone goes through something tramatic (heart attack most commonly) and upon recovery thinks they experienced the act of dying, visions of the afterlife, and then returning.

What we experience with Henry is not an NEAR-death experience, it's a death-experience.

And just like the outside stimulous being incorperated into dreams, we see portions of the death-experience through Sam's eyes because Henry is trying to save himself the way Sam is. For example, going with the dream reference, I can think of plenty of dreams I've had in which I started out as myself, but later ended up "taking control" of someone else and following their "plot" in my dream. I feel that's why we have exposure to Sam's PoV, as part of Henry is trying to stay alive, while another part of him knows that he's going to die.

Ultimately his body is too damaged to keep him alive, and the "Henry" persona in the death/dream wins out, even though he does want to live, just as anyone who is mentally stable (hence his 'Henry' persona needing a psychiatrist) wants to live, and doesn't want to die.

The artistic part is that the director decided to have Sam and Lila "feel" or "flash" through some of the images of the death/dream after Henry dies. This adds a level of importance to what we've experienced. If Henry just died and everyone walked away it would feel cheap (to some, I would have still enjoyed the movie as an experience). But by hinting that Sam and Lila felt connected by Henry's death and might form a relationship after the crash, it adds an upside to what was essentially a movie about a man in a car crash who dies along with his parents and future fiance.

My .02


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tknight, youre thinking of it as a David Lynch film, Lynch it is not.

its not that deep, the end reveals it all, no more no less

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This is probably way out but my first thought was Henry's girlfriend, Athena, was involved with a previous suicide attempt. Because Henry was continually confusing Lila with Athena (he even asked Lila if she would marry him), it obviously wasn't nurse Lila who had a troubled life, but rather girlfriend Athena.

Too weird?

- The Truth is Out There, and I found it in Christ!

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I understand your post and feel the exact same way. Very interesting movie which became not just confusing but a let down. I like your theory as well.

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Just watched it for the second time 7 years apart tho.

I saw it first at the theatre and was surprised by the ending although I figured out they had a wreck and he felt guilty because he caused it.

I thought he was alive and walking around wishing he was dead.

to find out he is actually dying and all the people around him are now part of his hallucination was crazy and shocking.

He had this awful car accident and realized somehow on the ground that he was the only one left alive since Lila said "they're gone." Henry heard that and it started his dream world.

Also for anyone who thinks Henry did not die...he did. Altho the body bag with him was left open temporarily, at the very end when they the view is way above the bridge, his body bag is closed.

Again, if he was alive, he'd be in an ambulance and the sheets would be white, and he'd be on a stretcher with paramedics!! Good grief, have some sense.

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I'm sure someone else already replied with this theory, but I haven't seen anyone else say it, so I will.

I believe the whole suicide part is Henry's way of letting go, and dying. He's holding on for dear life throughout the whole dream world, and decides to let go, and die. It's not so much a suicide in the real world, but it rings of the same tune as a suicide in the dream world because either way he dies.

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the old man is a figment of his imagination, as he is his dead father. just like the dead mother was alive in the house when he went there. thats why it can see Henry.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

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I'm glad i read this thread as it's pissed on my theory that ewan mcgregor was in fact the future ryan gosling character, show's what a spaz i am lol
I assumed mcgregor was the ghost of gosling 20 years on
Amazing how people view films differently
lol

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The reason for the suicide is just like how we dream and sometimes make up a story and incorporate a real life object like an alarm going off in our dream before it even happens as if we're psychic. Henry is about to die and his brain knows this, so he makes up this story where he shoots himself and then you see a black screen with an image similar to that of an electrical short or a light bulb burning out. It was his brain dying. Then the movie continues to back track to before he died to piece the movie together. But when he shot himself, that is when he died in real life.

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