stay

no. 43 Stay

I've seen this before and I know I wrote somewhere about it, I just can find it, which is terribly frustrating...

Stay is an extraordinary film. It's so well written and shot - the very specific framing and locations were nothing short of amazing. Stay is about illusion, but in the sense of our own fragile memory. The title refers to the pleading "stay with me", however, for Henry, this is not about his physical body, but about his mental battle. I believe Henry chose Sam, the doctor who is helping to save his life on Brooklyn Bridge, as the means to work through his confusion over the accident, the death of his to-be fiance and parents and ultimately, his own.

We're watching Henry's collective memory projected as a relationship between he and a Psychiatrist (his choice of of how to play it out). The switch in altered perception and POV between Sam and Henry - the irony lies in the transference of psychosis and positive/negative features of Schizophrenia (at it's very basic an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, scewed perception, NOT DID or multiple personalities) from patient to doctor. Granted, this is all just the means in which Henry is processing his mental detachment from his physical body and death. Although we may read this projection as pretty bleak, in his process, he's choosing to take his own life rather than to have it taken from him, which is happening in his reality. "An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art." Henry sees suicide as a way to be in control of the mind/body separation and wants to believe his life was a beautiful work of art.

The "bar" scene is gorgeous, with all the polaroid projections of Henry's life.

I'm sad to say that I've used Lola's lines about her suicide attempt to stop people in their tracks when they speak to me, ask about their loved one's mental health issues, begging me to tell them how to get them to share. Unless you've been there, you don't understand suicide, see it as selfish and weak. Lola's experience and strength has shown people a different side, even if they can't understand it.

"There's just too much goddamn beauty to quit."