Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Mea Culpa: School Has Been Insanely Doomtastic ... Plus DVD Review of "Stay" (2005)

Posting hasn't been up to my usual standards because I'm preoccupied with school responsibilities.  Um ... sorry?  I'm hoping things get better after Spring Break!  We'll get back to foreign policy, politics, science and tech, and things of greater import than Oscar night lunacy.  Too bad school has been insane.  Ugh.

On a related note about insanity: I made a big mistake (or else indulged in a darkly brilliant bit of unintentional, serendipitous irony) the other night when I watched the 2005 flick "Stay" while doing teaching prep.  That flick is sheer head-pounding madness of a completely David Lynchian type!  It was a medicated-like-House fever dream.  You  know, once when I was really, really sick, I took NyQuil, and the vividly bizarre, down-the-rabbit hole, fleeing-from-monsters dreams that resulted wouldn't have been out of place in this flick!  And no, I've never taken NyQuil again.  I'd rather suffer.  But as for this flick about such uplifting ideas as guilt, grief, self-destruction, the dissolution of reality, and the descent into madness?  Maybe not the best pick for diversion during a study binge? Too close to grad school?  *Sigh.*  (And so here I go, preferring to scribble this off the cuff as another form of procrastination.  I'd rather do this than the work that has a deadline in 2 days, you know?)


Reality Bites.




I had given "Stay" a chance because every once in a while I end up really liking a flick that was badly reviewed at large, like 2002's "Equilibrium" or 2008's "Outlander" -- I even reviewed it at length.  Look at the actors: "Equilibrium" had Christian Bale and Sean Bean; "Outlander" had Jim Caviezel.  These guys are usually good.  But "Stay"?  I saw it because it had Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling, and I really like these folks (especially in the wake of "Half Nelson"). (And I'll forgive McGregor's involvement in the Star Wars prequels.)  But ... Watching this movie was like getting sucked into a surrealist painting for 2 hours while the universe disintegrates all around you in a swirl of garish colors and dark clouds.  It's so far-out arty and flat-out bananas and self-indulgent that it's no wonder that "Stay" turned a bunch of critics off when it was first released. Peter Travers and Roger Ebert and some other big shot critics liked it, but the RottenTomatoes rating of 26% speaks pretty loudly.

McGregor's supposed to be Sam Foster the protagonist, a psychiatrist trying to save a troubled New York City art student promising to kill himself on his 21st birthday.  It's a fine premise, but I'm sorry to say that McGregor's just not quite up to the task.  I never really got into his head.  Besides, whoever did his hair and wardrobe should be banned from the profession.  At important moments when (I assume) I as the audience should be thinking about his descent into Lynchian lunacy, all I could think of was stuff like, "What the hell is wrong with his pants?  He's wearing bright yellow pants!  And they're too short!  With no socks!  And ... loafers?  And a cardigan that's too small!  And this is supposed to be professional wear for a psychiatrist?  In Manhattan?  Are you a shrink or a hipster?  A hipster shrink?  OMG, I hope not" -- and then I'm off and wondering just how a hipster shrink is supposed to work ... and a good five minutes of the flick has spun by.


See, I wasn't kidding or exaggerating about those pants!

Surprisingly, Naomi Watts is more interesting as Foster's artist girlfriend who is herself a suicide survivor and so can't help becoming emotionally attached to his hard case.  The best acting of the piece is -- no surprise -- by Ryan Gosling as the tormented art student.  His performance goes from being unsettling to flat-out harrowing in places.  When he becomes haunted by guilt and horror to the edge of endurance, I bought it in a way I never bought McGregor's schtick (and fugly yellow pants).


Hey, how about trying your hand at "Hamlet"?  
You've already got the black outfit and melancholy down pat.

In terms of visuals, the flick turns New York City into an underworld of twisting streets and suffocating interiors, all of which feel as though a dark grimy emotional miasma looms over them.  There's an utterly mad sequence with the Brooklyn Bridge.  Or at least it looks like the Brooklyn Bridge -- sort of -- but it could just as easily be a Manhattan version of the gates of hell.  In the end, you can't wait to escape and wake up from this cinematic fever dream.  Hell, by the end of it, I -- head pounding -- was glad to go back to school work.  I won't spoil the movie's ending, but it's a doozy that somehow felt less than it could have and should have been.  Besides, I thought the movie could have done a lot more with really big ideas like life and death, guilt and forgiveness, and being human than it actually did; it was too busy throwing colors and noises at the screen and giving its audience a massive migraine from sensory overload.  I'd give "Stay" a low C, but I'll give it a C+ on the basis of Gosling's performance alone.  But after that, I'm off to watch "Crazy Stupid Love" next -- I need a laugh!

Aaaaaaand now that I've successfully procrastinated for darn near an hour, I better get back to writing my paper.  *Sigh.*

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