Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

If I Stay Blu-ray Movie Review

. . . I'll Be Special

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 16, 2014

Gayle Forman's successful 2009 novel If I Stay is part of the distinctive subgenre of young adult fiction in which the main character is dying. The continued popularity of such tales speaks to a common experience, probably rooted in early intimations of adult life's uncertainties, coupled with the operatic emotions that make adolescents and even some twenty-somethings experience everything as a matter of life or death. Certainly that was the sensibility guiding the film adaptation of If I Stay, which was produced by MGM and released by Warner Brothers in August 2014. Adapted by Shauna Cross (Whip It) and directed by R.J. Cutler, a documentary filmmaker making his feature debut, the film flew under the radar due to its modest budget but became a minor hit thanks to smart casting choices and the novel's loyal following. MGM has now released the film on Blu-ray, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.

The story is narrated by Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz), the shy elder daughter of Denny (Joshua Leonard), a former punk rock drummer turned English teacher, and Kat, a former groupie turned housewife, mother and travel agent in their home town of Portland, Oregon. Mia loves her younger brother, Teddy (Jacob Davies) and is devoted to her best friend Kim (Liana Liberato), but Mia's true passion in life is the cello, which she practices for hours. She recently auditioned for entry to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York and is nervously awaiting the school's response.

There is much more to Mia's story, but we learn it in flashbacks and from her anguished "spirit" wandering the halls of a Portland hospital after she and her family are involved in a horrific auto accident less than a quarter hour into the film. As she watches her own body in a coma and observes her devastated grandparents (Stacy Keach and Gabrielle Rose) and aunt (Lauren Lee Smith) waiting for news, Mia recalls all of the important moments that led up to now. Many of them involve her family and friends, of course, but another person figures prominently. His name is Adam.

For many viewers, especially the female audience, Mia's romance with Adam (Jamie Blakely) is the core of the film. The guitarist and lead singer of a local band named Williamette Stone that is just beginning to taste success, Adam notices Mia locked away in a practice room and becomes intrigued by her musical devotion, even though it's an entirely different kind of music. (Her favorite composer is Beethoven.) The relationship that develops is halting, gentle and sweetly played by Moretz and Blakely, as Mia and Adam navigate their many differences, including his trust issues, which result from his having grown up without a supportive family, and hers, which result from events like a female fan thrusting her breasts forward asking Adam to autograph them. After much progress, though, the couple reaches an impasse over Juilliard. When Adam learns that Mia has applied to a school on the other side of the country, he feels betrayed, and the couple splits. That is the state of affairs when Adam learns of the car wreck and comes racing to the hospital, desperate for a sign of life from the comatose Mia. Her spirit, who cannot be heard, can only watch in sorrow. Like so many love stories, theirs must be told in the past tense.

When Mia first arrives at the hospital, a nurse from the ER (Aisha Hinds)—who probably performs this ritual with all her patients—whispers into her ear that the decision to live is hers, if she is willing to fight. Later, Mia's grandfather sits by her bedside, tearfully explaining to an unconscious Mia (whose spirit is standing beside him) how hard it will be for her to move forward, should she awaken, because everything in her life has changed so radically. "True love is a bitch", Mia's mother told her. Wandering the hospital's corridors, Mia has reached the same conclusion about life. And now she has a decision to make.

If I Stay Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

According to IMDb, If I Stay was shot digitally on an Arri Alexa XT at 2.8K resolution and finished on a 2K digital intermediate. The cinematographer was the distinguished British DP John de Borman (The Full Monty and An Education). In his commentary, director Cutler notes that he wanted to maintain as much of a sense of documentary realism as possible. To that end, he avoided "other worldly" visual effects, allowing Mia's spiritual essence to look, sound and behave just like other people in the hospital.

The image on Fox/MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a solidly workmanlike presentation of how If I Stay would look when projected from a 2K DCP ("digital cinema package"), which would have been the most common form of distribution. The image is sharp and detailed, the blacks are solid and the color palette has been precisely calibrated to achieve specific moods: chill and clinical in the hospital environs, warm and nostalgic in happy remembrances (even when it's snowy and cold outside), gradually desaturating as death approaches. The image often has an almost film-like texture, which is one of the Alexa's hallmarks.

Fox has encoded the disc at a high average bitrate of 30.22 Mbps, ensuring that some of the trickier scenes involving clubs with big audiences, school hallways and, of course, the terrible accident aftermath are reproduced in all their detail with no artifacts.

If I Stay Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The chief beneficiary of If I Stay's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is the carefully selected musical accompaniment that is the subject of an entire separate commentary by the director. When the characters' lives revolve so intensely around music, the music that expresses their emotions should play with great presence and clarity, and the sound mix provides both. (The selections are listed below under "Music Commentary".) Dialogue is clear, with the voiceover narration and character exchanges properly prioritized. Key sound effects get their due, but are relegated subtly to the background, especially in the hospital, with its ever-present beeping of monitors. The nicely calibrated score by Heitor Pereira (Despicable Me) fills in the gaps unobtrusively.

If I Stay Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "I Never Wanted to Go" Music Montage (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:28): A selection of key moments between Mia and Adam set to one of Adam's songs.



• "Never Coming Down" Music Video (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:30): The song performed by Willamette Stone on Halloween.



• Beyond the Page (1080p; 1.78:1; 14:27): This three-part "making of" features interviews with Moretz, Blackley, Leonard, Enos, Liberato, Keach, director Cutler, producer Greenspan and author Forman.
• The Love of Music
• Adapting IF I STAY
• An Out of Body Experience



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Commentary by R.J. Cutler and Alison Greenspan (1080p; 2.40:1; 4:17): According to the main commentary, there was almost no excess footage. The longest excision is the "Chapel" scene, which is very good but didn't fit with the pacing.
• Bookstore
• Hospital Chapel



• Commentary by Writer/Director R.J. Cutler and Producer Alison Greenspan: This is an enthusiastic account of the film from its early development through post-production, with the strongest emphasis on casting and shooting in Vancouver, where an abandoned mental hospital was used for the hospital set. What become clear from Cutler's description is that his directing choices are guided less by visual style than by performance and a sense of whether the action of the scene is advancing the story.



• Music Commentary by R.J. Cutler (50:17): This second commentary track skips to select scenes in the film where the director discusses how each musical selection was chosen. A listing is provided:
• "Who Needs You"
• "Until We Get There"
• "I Want What You Have"
• "All of Me"
• "Promise"
• "Never Coming Down"
• "Halo"
• "I Will Be There"
• "Mind"
• "Morning"
• "I Never Wanted to Go"
• "Karen Revisited"
• "Today"
• "Heart Like Yours"
• "Heal (IF I STAY Version)"
• "Cello Suit No. 1 Prelude"
• "Cello Concerto No. 1"
• "Cello Sonata"



• Gallery (1080p): This combination of publicity stills and behind-the-scene photos can be viewed as an automatic slide show or advanced manually.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:31): Arguably, this trailer gives away more than is necessary, but then the target audience probably already knew the story.



• Sneak Peak: A "play all" function is included, and the first four items (marked with an asterisk) play when the disc is first loaded.
• *MGM 90th Anniversary
• *The Fault in Our Stars
• *The Longest Week
• *The Best of Me
• And So It Goes
• The Maze Runner
• Earth to Echo
• Carrie (2013)

If I Stay Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As well-crafted and sincere a film as If I Stay may be, from a perspective much older than that of the target audience, one can't help but notice how much the deck has been stacked in Mia's favor. Yes, she suffers terrible loss, but one must also consider what she has to begin with. She is a musical prodigy, graced with a talent beyond anything that most people, even other musicians, will ever experience. Simply by being herself, she has managed to attract perhaps the most desirable young man in Portland, and although their paths may diverge in the future, the man is here now, hovering at her bedside. She was raised by parents who supported her, believed in her and sacrificed for her; whatever happens in the future, she will always have that bedrock of inner confidence. Few people in a coma after a catastrophic event would have so much calling them back to the land of the living.

But Mia isn't a typical person. She's a star, a celebrity-in-the-making, a winner of the brass ring. It's not enough, at least in America, that popular culture invites young people to consider momentous questions of life and death. It must also ask them to imagine themselves in the role of someone "special", "extraodinary" or "chosen"—a Luke Skywalker, a Buffy or a Neo. Choose life as an ordinary person? What a dull idea for a movie! (It wouldn't have to be, but never mind.) Recommended as a Blu-ray. Decide for yourself whether it's your kind of story.