in love. She is an aspiring actress and he meets her at a script reading where she is reading lines from Hamlet with another man. She agrees to take him to Henry, but after a long trip down winding staircases he loses her. When he gets back to the rehearsal room, she is there reading the same lines as when he first encountered her. The search continues until 11:33 pm on Saturday, less than half an hour before Henry plans to kill himself. At a bookshop known to have been frequented by Henry, Sam finds a painting that Henry had painted and bartered for books about Henry's favorite artist. He learns that the artist killed himself on the Brooklyn Bridge on his 21st birthday. Henry's twenty-first birthday is Sunday, and Sam realizes that Henry plans to commit suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge in imitation of the artist. Sam finds Henry on the Brooklyn Bridge in a physical atmosphere that is increasingly unraveling. Sam admits to Henry that he doesn't know what is real anymore. Henry tells Sam that he is real, and he was just trying to help him. Henry tells Sam that he now knows the world is a dream, and shoots himself with his gun. The car crash of the first scene is then reprised. Henry was fatally wounded in the crash but, in his last moments, is suffering survivor guilt, thus spending his final moment in the dream in which the story occurred. Each of the characters introduced earlier in the film was in fact a random spectator at the site of the crash, including doctor Sam and nurse Lila, who treat Henry in an attempt to save him. The brief remarks they make are the same ones heard previously by their counterparts earlier. (Also, the paintings seen throughout the movie, like in the entry way of the classroom that Henry remarked were terrible, and in the bookstore, are shown to be the last images that a dying Henry sees around him on the bridge). They fail to rescue Henry, and Henry dies, but not before seeing Lila as Athena and proposing to her, which Lila accepts out of sympathy. Sam asks Lila out for coffee, saying that he cannot sleep after what happened. Cast Ewan McGregor as Dr. Sam Foster Naomi Watts as Lila Culpepper Ryan Gosling as Henry Letham Bob Hoskins as Dr. Leon Patterson