Stay (2005)
Directed by Marc Forster
Psychiatrist Sam Foster has a new patient, Henry Letham, who claims to be suicidal. In trying to diagnose him, Sam visits Henry's prior therapist and also finds Henry's mother -- even though Henry has said that he murdered both of his parents. As reality starts to contradict fact, Sam spirals into an unstable mental state. Then he finds a clue as to how and when Henry may try to kill himself, and races to try to stop him.
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What critics compared Stay to
Surely no one can say the obtuse Forster is cut from the same mold as Lynch or Antonioni, two masters who are able to convey a weighty sense of spiritual crisis, transference, and ascension with as little as a zoom into a box (see Mulholland Drive ) or a long take through the bar-lined windows of a room where a man is about to die and out into a courtyard outside (see The Passenger ).
The images often are visually impressive, but after a while, they feel trite - and as old as Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound."
It immediately reminded me of Marc Forster’s Stay (2005), Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008).
Stranger Than Fiction isn't his best of those movies (I'd vote for his underappreciated 2005 movie Stay), but it's another inventive bright spot on his growing resume.
It's also one of the best films of the year and one in which Marc Forster has found a workable middle-ground between reality and the hallucinatory fireworks of his brilliant, but largely unappreciated and misunderstood, Stay (2005).
Director Marc Forster has floundered thus far with realism ( Everything Put Together , Monster's Ball ) and flights of fantasy both maudlin ( Finding Neverland ) and baffling ( Stay ), but he shows a nice touch here, even if he's sometimes clumsy or misguided (as with a trick shot of the inside of Ferrell's mouth while brushing his teeth).
Director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland") tries to match it with a well-designed film, though it's not as visually ambitious as his previous film "Stay," but it may have needed to be; several of "Stranger Than Fiction's" visual cues are reminiscent of David Fincher and Krzysztof Kies'lowski.
Director Marc Forster ( "Stay" , "Monster's Ball" ) has a lot of fun with the script by Zach Helm, particularly in one flirtatious scene aboard a double-length bus and in the way the film visualizes Harold's OCD as a series of internet-esque rollovers.
Directed by Marc Forster (Stay, Finding Neverland) from a script by first-timer Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction is lovely and erudite, epigrammatic and slow â and not at all the kooky Ferrell vehicle you might be led to expect.
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I don't post trailers here too often, but this one has so many things that intrigue me: Guillermo del Toro, fabulous period costumes, "Pan's Labyrinth"-ish creatures, stylish horror, creepy old houses, moody piano playing, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Charlie Hunnam . . .