MovieChat Forums > Stay (2005) Discussion > Main Hamlet connection

Main Hamlet connection


Not sure if this was mentioned exactly, but Hamlet is known for it's use of the device "play within a play". And that's precisely what this entire film showed. It was a play within a play. The outer play is Henry's car accident where he can't move. While the inner play is Henry's dream state where he is able to emotionally experience the accident and say good-bye. Plus the nice touch where Hamlet is being rehearsed IN the inner-play... just shows how much detail and thought was put into this movie.

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Also, another poster suggests this:

And what’s with the endless spiralling staircases? I believe that this is the most obvious visual clue telling us that whatever is happening in the movie is being played out in a dream like fashion; of dreams being within dreams, as one struggles to wake up from one only to end up in another dream. This thought of mine was reinforced by the particular scene which seemed to play, repeat, the scene where Athena, Henry’s girlfriend is re-enacting a scene from hamlet, taking on the role of Ophelia (who is doomed to die), but who would rather be in Hamlet’s shoes (debating death, as Henry is). HAMLET: “O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams…”

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here's the scene:

Hamlet:
What have you, my good friends, deserv'd at the hands of
Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern:
Prison, my lord?

Hamlet:
Denmark's a prison.

Rosencrantz:
Then is the world one.

Hamlet:
A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o' th' worst.

Rosencrantz:
We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet:
Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.


Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251


the connection seems fairly obvious

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