User:Laura1822/Notebook/Lakehouse

This is a 2006 film involving a timeline paradox and a love story with themes of loneliness, timing, and soul mates.

Plot
Kate, a lonely doctor, and Alex, a frustrated architect, become pen pals through a magic mailbox at a lake house where they both have lived. Alex lives at the lake house in 2004, and Kate in 2005. The story begins when Kate leaves a note for the next tenant as she moves out of the lake house (in early 2006) and Alex moves in (in early 2004) and finds her letter. They begin a correspondence, via the time-portal mailbox, in which they find that they are experiencing life exactly two years apart to the day.

As time progresses, they fall in love, but attempts to meet in Kate's timeline fail. The end of the movie involves a temporal paradox worthy of Star Trek, and the presumed happy ending is in real jeopardy.

The film features beautiful cinematography, Chicago architecture, convincing character portrayals, and a screenplay by a Pulitzer-winning playwright, David Auburn.

Themes
Themes of isolation, disconnectedness, distance, control, containment—also love, timing, meeting the right person at the wrong time, waiting, second chances, trust, and finally redemption and fulfillment. "Moving forward:" when is it really moving backward? Resistance to taking what (or who) is offered to you and having the courage to seize what (or who) you want instead. Taking risks, eschewing the "safe" alternative. Architecture, especially Chicago's, but also how it relates and creates feelings of connection (or disconnection) and control over one's environment. Yearning, waiting for the other to be ready. Identity, making a fresh start. Their lives are parallel two years apart, because they are experiencing the same things: losing their fathers, finding out who they are, trying to put the past behind them and make a new start, becoming a whole person. Light. Soul mates. Using hands—building, renovating, writing, drawing, healing—and touching, especially by proxy.

blog post
I saw a movie last week without knowing much about it beforehand, and it took me by surprise how much I liked it. It's called The Lake House. It's about falling in love with a pen pal, and it has a timeline paradox worthy of Star Trek. (Of course, I love Star Trek, so timeline paradoxes don't bother me too much.) But this movie has a few other things that are quite special. A Pulitzer-winning playwright for a screenwriter and a director with a vision, just to mention two. Together they have created a richly textured story, with themes and nuances at every level. Every time I turn around I find another thread that ties back into it.

Themes of isolation, disconnectedness, distance, control, containment—also love, timing, meeting the right person at the wrong time, waiting, second chances, trust, and finally redemption and fulfillment. "Moving forward:" when is it really moving backward? Resistance to taking what (or who) is offered to you and having the courage to seize what (or who) you want instead. Taking risks, eschewing the "safe" alternative. Architecture, especially Chicago's, but also how it relates and creates feelings of connection (or disconnection) and control over one's environment. Yearning, waiting for the other to be ready. Identity, making a fresh start. The protaganists' lives are parallel, because they are experiencing the same things: losing their fathers, finding out who they are, trying to put the past behind them and make a new start, becoming a whole person. Light. Soul mates. Using hands—building, renovating, writing, drawing, healing—and touching, especially by proxy.

This film is definitely in my all-time top ten list. Rent it. Here's the trailer.

Isolation
In the film, after coming off a 30-hour shift at the hospital, Kate says to Alex in a letter: "I realize how isolated I've let myself become." In the beginning of the trailer (though apparently cut from the film), in what is probably the rest of the same speech, she tells him: "I sometimes feel as if I am invisible, as if no one can see me at all.  I never felt that way when I lived at the lake house.  It's the one place I felt most like my true self."

Kate and Alex both spend a year in isolation at the lake house, but conversely feel less isolated there than they do out in the world.

It is their isolation which makes both Kate and Alex willing to open up to each other in their letters. The letters seem safe because of their distance; they are able to be themselves with each other, through the letters, in the same way that they are able to be themselves in the house. Kate is unable to be herself with anyone else or in any other place; only with Alex can she be her true self.

Timing
When Henry asks Alex whether he has a girlfriend, Alex responds: "I don't have any time for that." Henry says, "What does time have to do with it?"

Later, when Henry asks Alex why Kate ended their correspondence, he says: "Time."

Meeting the right person at the wrong time; meeting the wrong person at the right time and trying to make do;  experiencing the same things in parallel two years apart;  waiting.

The relationships of the two couples are discussed under "Relationships" below.

Waiting
Ultimately, Alex waits nearly four whole years for Kate. Two of those years we don't see at all.

Kate waits two years, but she doesn't realize that she is waiting for most of it. She tries to move forward with her life, but she is trapped.


 * About the little girl patient's mother, waiting for the next good thing to come around the corner, Kate says: "If she's not careful, she could spend her whole life waiting."
 * Mona, as Alex chases Jack: "Alex, wait for me!"
 * Kate describes Persuasion as a book about waiting.
 * When they make their date for Il Mare, Kate says: "But Alex, it won't be tomorrow for you—you're going to have to wait two more years."  "I know!  I don't care!"  he shouts.  "I'll wait!"
 * Kate waiting for Alex at Il Mare.
 * Kate telling Alex about the people waiting at home for the dead man. But what if he had no one?  "What if you live your whole life, and no one is waiting?"
 * Alex says to Henry, on Valentine's Day, 2006: "Wait—say that again."
 * Morgan calls after Kate, as she runs out of Henry's office: "Wait!  Stop—just stop."
 * Kate's last letter: "Wait for me.  Wait with me.  Just wait. Wait.  Wait two years, Alex."

Touching
Kate and Alex touch each other only by proxy throughout the film except for two scenes: the central moment where they dance and then embrace at the birthday party, and the end when they are finally together.

Light
especially sunsets
 * in Chicago, when Alex visits his father at home
 * in Chicago, the night before Alex's father dies
 * as Alex drives towards Lincoln Park to plant Kate's tree
 * at the lake house, when Alex and Kate are both present in their separate times, wishing they could share it, but only sharing it with Jack (in the trailer)
 * at the lake house, when Alex receives Kate's gift of the book about his father the day he dies
 * at the lake house, when Alex begins his drawing of the house
 * at the lake house, when Alex packs, especially when he puts the bundle of letters away (in the trailer)


 * party lights on Kate and Alex during their dance on the lawn
 * Simon's light lecture to Alex the night before he dies, which is ultimately about the lake hosue

Crime and Punishment
Early in the film, Kate's mother reads Crime and Punishment. She says it is a strange book, where a man kills someone and then wanders around regretting it. Later, Kate tells Alex in a letter that she loves to read the classics aloud to Jack. Alex inquires who is Jack's favorite, and she replies, "Dostoevsky."

The copy of Crime and Punishment in Kate's mother's bag, which belonged to her father, is a similar edition to the copy of Persuasion that he gave Kate, and which becomes an important element of connection between Kate and Alex.

The only similarity between Crime and Punishment and the film's story is that the protagonist has to experience a lonely exile in order to become capable of love; the person whom he realizes that he loves is the one to whom he confessed, and who serves as his spiritual guide.

Kate has to experience an exile of her residency followed by a year at the lake house alone, without even exchanging letters with Alex, before she is capable of loving him. During their correspondence, she bares her soul to Alex, telling him things she doesn't share with anyone else, and he guides her through it. The reciprocal is true of Alex as well; he has to experience an exile—four years of estrangement from his father and brother, followed by his year at the lake house—in order to become capable of loving not only Kate but his father. Alex's journey is a little closer to the book's protagonist's, because it is during his exile that he realizes he can and does love. For Kate, it is after her exile is over, when she is at least tying to re-enter the world, that she realizes that she can truly love. All of them experience a spiritual rebirth during their exiles; for Kate and Alex, in exile at the lake house at different times, the light coming through the house serves as a visual metaphor for this rebirth, especially the sunset, which they wish they could share.

Notorious
The only obvious similarity between Notorious and The Lake House is the love triangle. Two men are in love with the female protagonist, and she spends much of the movie with the one she doesn't love; but in the end the one she loves saves her. The scene shown twice in the film comes from the end of Notorious, when the lovers are united. They talk of inconsequential things while they hold each other tightly and kiss each other. Alex and Kate's last scene together is somewhat reminiscent of it, but without words.

Physical objects
Physical connection over the time gap is provided by tangible things both Kate and Alex can touch in their respective times, and thus by proxy touch each other. Objects they both touch include the dog, the tree, the map, the scarf, the books, the drawing of the house, the house itself and its mailbox, and the letters themselves. There are also several people whom they both touch, even if only by a handshake: Alex's brother Henry, Vanessa, Morgan, and Dr. K; although rather than shaking hands, Dr. K. touches both of them on the upper arm in a gesture of comfort.

All of these items are gifts.

Letters
The letters are important not just because they are a means of communication, but because they are a tactile means of communication. They are not emails stored in a computer, or sound waves lost forever after a word spoken on a telephone, or even typed. They are letters, handwritten on paper, and requiring a wait for a reply. They become true love letters, in a sense that our post-email society has lost. When Kate spends all her free time at the hospital writing letters to Alex, she is sharing not only her time and attention, but finds, in the security of the forced distance of letter writing, that she is able to be her true self, and expose her vulnerabilities without fearing rejection face-to-face, something she has not been able to achieve in her "real life" relationships.

She also touches the paper; when Alex reads it, he knows that the movements of her hand across the page left the ink behind. As he prepares to move at the end of his year in the lake house, he packs all of Kate's letters up into a box (which he leaves in the attic); before he puts the bundle in the box, he kisses it lingeringly, the last time he will be able to touch her, even by proxy, for a very long time, perhaps for ever.

House
The house, and Alex's personal renovation of it, works backward to show a connection between Alex and his father, who built the house with his own hands as a gift for his mother, and it also works forward as Alex creates a new gift for Kate, whom he knows will be moving into the house when he leaves it. Everything he touches, he can imagine not only his father's hands building it, but Kate's hands touching it next year.

The house is a box of steel and glass that rests above the water on pilings and is connected to the shore by a wooden footbridge. It is one story, in a cruciform shape with a central square, creating more outward corners, with glass walls and skylights, and a central two-story atrium containing a full-sized tree and a retractable roof. It has no interior walls, only the supporting beams, and you can stand on the shore and see all the way through it to the lake's opposite shore. It is not a plain glass box like a Mies van der Rohe structure, but more ornate and organic, almost a throwback to Otto Wagner, or, as Henry says, "Corbusier meets Frank Lloyd Wright." ("He played cards with both of them, you know," answers Alex.)


 * Alex: There should be a stairway down to the water, a porch, a deck. Here, you're in a — in a box. A glass box with a view to everything that's around you.  But you can't touch it:  no interconnection between you and what you're looking at.
 * Henry: I don't know. You know, he's got this big maple growing right in the middle of the house.
 * Alex: Containment! [He pushes a button which opens the atrium roof.]  Containment and control. This house is about ownership, not connection. I mean, it's beautiful—seductive, even. But it's incomplete.  It was all about him. Dad knew how to build a house, not a home. But you know, I think he wants us to do what he couldn't. But admitting that would mean admitting that he came up short in some way, that he could do more—and that tortures him.
 * Henry: Do you remember being here with Mom?
 * Alex: I remember she tried to make it work here, with us, with him.

But eventually, their father's work destroyed their family, and both sons must now deal with trying to live up to his expectations as well as healing the wounds of their family breakup.

The house is unique. It is both exposed, because of the glass walls, and private, because there is nothing around it but nature. Its transparency perhaps is a factor in forcing those who live in it to see their true selves. The light shines all the way through it, leaving nothing hidden in shadow. Perhaps for this very reason, it is the kind of house that people will either love or hate; both Alex and Kate love it, and find peace there, as well as themselves. It is only after living in isolation in a luminous glass house that they are whole persons able to form deep connections with others.

Jack
The dog, Jack, is the only animate connection bridging their separate timelines. Kate has apparently owned the dog since at least 2004, because when she pulls out a photograph showing the snow on April 2, 2004, she says to her: "Do you remember that day?  You were not happy.  Remember?" Jack is not in the photograph. Yet the dog shows up at the lake house shortly after Alex arrives in early 2004, and in fact plays a key role in his coming to believe that Kate really is writing from his future: Kate apologizes about the paw prints in paint leading to the front door;  Alex sees no such prints. But a few days later, he is painting the railing on the walkway when Jack shows up and runs through the paint pan and tracks it straight to the front door.

At one point (in the trailer), Kate and Alex "share" a sunset at the lake house together through their letters. "It's perfect," Kate says. He responds: "I only wish you were here share it with me." But the images show them both caressing Jack as they watch the sunset in their separate timelines. In this moment, Jack represents not just a link but a proxy to touching each other.

In the summer, Jack runs away from Alex's construction site and he chases her. He finds her at Morgan Price's house. Through their conversation, Alex realizes that this is Kate's boyfriend (whom he had seen at the train station a few months earlier), and he cannot resist an invitation to attend a birthday party that night for Kate. Casual conversation reveals that Morgan may be looking for a lake house to rent or buy soon, as Kate doesn't like his Victorian house.

At the end of the year, when Kate and Alex become estranged, Jack runs away again. This time Alex doesn't chase her, and she doesn't come back. He watches, stricken, as his only living connection to Kate disappears from his life, and realizes that he must leave the house so that Kate can come live there, and that he cannot come to her at the house while she lives there.

Jack shows up at Morgan's office right after Alex gives him the keys to the lake house for Kate. Morgan seems to recognize her, but makes no effort to give her back to Alex.

Jack is the only item which Kate and Alex are both able to touch which is not a gift from one to the other. But perhaps she is a gift from fate, or from God, trying to right the wrong that prevents them from being together.

Scarf
The scarf becomes almost a talisman. It is the first non-letter object sent through the mailbox, and it is when Kate's prediction about the spring blizzard comes true that Alex begins to believe she really is in 2006. He wears the scarf as a way of keeping her with him. He is wearing it on Valentine's Day, 2006, when he realizes that he can finally see her.

Map
The annotated map is another connection. Alex gives Kate an annotated map of Chicago and "takes" her on a walking tour one Saturday. Near the end of the walk, she sees grafitti on a wall: "Kate, I'm here with you.  Thanks for the lovely Saturday together."

Like the house itself, the walking tour is something that Alex once shared with his father that he now shares with Kate.

Tree
The tree is perhaps the simplest connection. Kate mentions that she misses the trees at the lake house. Alex plants a tree in front of her 2006 apartment building one night in 2004. In 2006, she is returning home in the rain; she drops something, and as she crouches to retrieve it, the tree appears;  she knows it is a gift from Alex and she thanks him. It is at this moment that Alex makes what is for him a declaration of his love for her and his determination to overcome their separation:

"'Don't worry, Kate. We'll be together in time. Even if we're far apart, I'll find a way to be close to you, and take care of you.'"

Later, after their estrangement, Kate stands beneath this tree, takes a long look at it, and then demonstrates her rejection of Alex and her resolve to "move forward" with her life by kissing Morgan, and bringing him back into her life as her boyfriend; indeed, he moves in with her almost immediately.

Simon Wyler: Life Works
Alex has achieved some sort of a reconciliation with his father, and is frightened when he learns that his father has had a heart attack. He rushes to the hospital, and finds that Simon is stable but will have to undergo some type of procedure the next day. He enters his father's (very posh and private) room to find him sitting up and working. "I'm fine. You didn't have to come," growls Simon, and then sends Alex for coffee.

While in the cafeteria, Alex writes to Kate, and tells her about his difficult relationship with his father, and how devastated he was by his parents' breakup and his father's callous response to his mother's death. Moreover, "there's something I've never told you, Kate. My father built the lake house.  I mean, with his own hands.  As a gift for my mother."

He returns to Simon's room, with coffee, and in their ensuing discussion about architecture, Simon, while he can't help lecturing, reveals a fundamental respect for Alex as an architect:


 * Alex: What are you looking at?
 * Simon: [looking at magazine]  Hmm?  Oh, yeah, here, take a gander.  It's a proposal for a museum.
 * Alex: Who is it?
 * Simon: Someone new.
 * Alex: Oh, I like the walkways, where the light falls.  What are the materials?
 * Simon: Granite, aluminum.
 * Alex: White panels are straight out of Meier, but the interior color coming through the front windows, that's different.  It's not new, but it's clean, uncluttered.  I like it.
 * Simon: When was the last time you were in Barcelona?
 * Alex: Years ago, with you, Mom and Henry.
 * Simon: Do you remember visiting Casa de la Caritat?
 * Alex: The almshouse.
 * Simon: That's right.  You mentioned Meier.  His Barcelona museum stands in the same area as Casa de la Caritat.  It drinks the same light.  Meier designed a series of louvered skylights to capture that light and cast it inward to illuminate the art within, but indirectly.  And that was important, because although light enhances art, it can also degrade it.  But you know all that already, you son of a gun.  Now, this—where do you suppose this is to be built?
 * Alex: I have no idea.
 * Simon: Oh, but you said you liked it.
 * Alex: Conceptually.
 * Simon: Now, come on. You know as well as I do that the light in Barcelona is quite different from the light in Tokyo. And the light in Tokyo is different from that in Prague. A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time, never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account.  He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature.  He must be captivated by the light.  Always the light.  Always.

The next day, Simon dies, and when Kate (having looked up Simon's hospital record) realizes it, she sends Alex a brand-new book, Simon Wyler: Life Works, as a gift and a substitute for herself, since she cannot be there with him so "that we could sit together and look out over the water and the light in this house your father built" to help him grieve. Perhaps the book "will help you know how much you were loved." As Alex takes the book from the mailbox, the sun is setting. That evening, after it is dark, he looks through the book and finds a picture of himself with his father at the lake house when he was only eight years old. His father's hand rests on his shoulder in the photo, and Alex breaks down and mourns the loss of his father and of that happy time, when his father loved his family and created a beautiful house as a personal gift to his wife and son.

Persuasion
The book Persuasion is both a physical connection and one that is timeless. Alex promises that although he wants to keep it for now, he will get the book back to her somehow; he gains access to Kate's future apartment building when it is nearing completion, and puts the book under a loosened floorboard in her bedroom (a scene which, if filmed, was left on the cutting room floor). He wrapped the book in plastic to protect it, but when she finds it and opens it (in late 2007, nearly a year after she cut off their correspondence), she finds a well-worn book, not the pristine copy she had left at the train station; and she is nearly overcome to discover between its pages a dried rose, and a passage marked on the page:

"…[T]here could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison."

Kate does not read anything further aloud in the film, but the passage continues:

"…no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement."

At the end of Persuasion, Anne makes an impassioned speech to Harville:

"'I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!'"

After overhearing this, Wentworth writes to Anne:

"'Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.'"

Soon, they are reunited, and they walk together in the park, where, surrounded by nature, they explore their reunion:

"There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their reunion, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting."

Drawing
Alex draws the front elevation of the house. He begins the drawing as an exercise of grief for his father, working on the shore near the house in the afternoon sun, and later at his drafting table in the house, always in the light of the sun. He takes this simple task, which he would have found stifling in his father's sterile office, and turns it into a loving creation reflecting the intimate gift that the house is: from his father to his mother, from his father to him, and from himself to both his father and Kate.

He is still working on it after he leaves the house, and Henry asks him one night (there is no light because Kate is gone; we don't see Alex in daylight again until April 14, 2006) why he is fixating on their father's house instead of working on something of his own. Alex answers: "because it's hers"—that is, the house is Kate's, not Simon's;  during this time she is living at the house, but the drawing is also a gift for the future when he hopes they will be together in the house. He tells Henry that they are no longer corresponding, and Henry starts to assert that it's a good thing, because Alex needs a "real" woman. But Alex cuts him off, telling Henry seriously: "While it lasted, she was more real to me than anything I've ever known.  I saw her.  I kissed her.  I love her.  Now she's gone.  She's gone."

More than two years later, when Kate hires Henry to renovate an old house she wants to buy ("Ambush!" says Morgan) so that she can move forward in her life, she notices the drawing of the lake house on the wall of Henry's conference room. Henry tells her that Alex drew it and she cannot resist touching it. It is this moment, while her fingertips caress its edges and the sunlight falls across its surface, that she finally puts it all together and is able to see the temporal paradox which has kept them apart, and thus a possible way out of it so that she can be with Alex. Thus the drawing, while serving as a proxy touch among Kate, Alex, and the house itself, becomes the central point of the film, from which all other connections derive, both backward and forward.

Hand delivery
The first encounter is one that didn't happen. Alex decides to respond to Kate's second letter by going to the address she has given him for forwarding her mail, and delivering his letter to her in person, possibly to meet her, to find out what is really happening. But when he goes to the address, he finds that it is a building under construction that won't be completed for another eighteen months.

He also decides to use the opportunity of a trip to the city to look up his brother and father. He has been estranged from them for four years, since he apparently left his father's architectural firm to go out on his own. He successfully reconnects with his brother, Henry, but their father walks by with merely an acknowledging wave of his hand. Over a beer, Alex tells Henry that although his job now—building cookie-cutter condos—is low-brow compared to his father's high-concept work, he likes building. Henry, who has remained at their father's side, hasn't actually built so much as a phone booth. Alex needs to work hands-on, with bricks and mortar, not just with a pencil at his drafting table in the sterile environment of an office.

In many ways, Alex owes his reconciliation with his brother, and eventually with his father, to Kate. If he had not taken that drive into Chicago then, his father would probably have died without seeing him again.

It is the morning after this failed delivery that Kate and Alex have their first "chat session" at the mailbox, exchanging notes in real time, when they learn that they are living two years apart to the day, but both doubt it's true, thinking it's a trick the other is playing. (Much of this exchange was cut from the final version of the film, but some of it is in the trailer.)

The train station
The first time Alex sees Kate is when he goes to the Riverside train station to retrieve a gift from her father which she tells him that she lost there when she left for her residency at "a small community hospital" in Madison, a (fictional) small town "on the north shore." If he finds it, would he please put it in the mailbox? Alex arrives a minute before the train is due to leave, and sees Kate kissing Morgan goodbye. She boards the train at the last moment; Morgan leaves, and Alex picks up the item she left on a bench, which is the book Persuasion. He runs after her, but the train has already started moving. He holds the book up for her to see, and waves tentatively, unsure of whether she sees him. He tells his correspondent Kate that he wants to keep it for now, but he understands how special it is to her and he promises to get it to her sometime. Perhaps, it is implied, he will give it to her in person. Oh, and by the way, Kate, "you never told me how beautiful you are.  Long brown hair, gentle unguarded eyes…"

This is the first time that Kate and Alex share the same physical space at the same time. Until this moment, they have shared the same space—the lake house—but at different times. They do not, however, touch each other, except through the proxy of the book. Structurally, this scene occurs one third of the way through the film.

2004
The longest scene in the film is when Alex meets Kate at the surprise birthday party Morgan throws for her in July 2004. Organizationally, this scene occurs at the Golden Mean point two-thirds of the way through the film, and the conversation between Kate and Alex, while they are sitting on the steps, is not only lengthy compared to most of the rest of the film, but shot in one take, from a single stationary camera.

Kate is returning home to Riverside for a weekend, and Morgan has invited "half the town" (as she later describes it) for a surprise birthday party. She turns to see the crowd gathered, with Morgan in the center holding a cake. Alex slips in behind Morgan, and gives Kate the same little tentative half-wave he had given her at the train station. She doesn't recognize him, of course, but he drinks in the sight of her with his eyes, hardly able to believe he is really in the same room with her.

Kate feels ambushed by the party, hating it, but smiles and pretends to be interested in meeting all of the people Morgan has invited, including Alex and his date, Mona (who was with him earlier that day when Jack ran away to Morgan's house, and so perforce was included in his invitation to the party). Morgan tells Kate that Alex is going to find them a lake house, but she is uninterested.

Later in the evening, she slams out of the house onto the back porch. She is angry and frustrated, her loneliness in the crowd of strangers so intense that she wants to be alone. Alex is on the porch, and no one else, though she doesn't see him at first. He wishes her a happy birthday and she clearly wants him to buzz off. He declines to take the hint and sits down beside her on the steps instead, even though she pointedly refuses to answer his request to join her. "I'm Alex—the lake house guy," he offers. Reluctantly trying to be polite, and make party talk she was just trying to escape, she asks if he is a real estate agent who is going to find her a lake house, but he says, "no, I just have a lake house. You're going to rent it after I move out."

Then he asks her about Persuasion. She is startled but describes it as her favorite book, about waiting, where two people have a second chance at love, but think it's too late for them. He is startled in turn and asks why she likes it. She says, "I don't know why; it's terrible!" and they agree and laugh together. He asks her if she's ever experienced anything like that and she says no, never; but then she offers a story of her first love—"probably the only one," she admits—at 16, who was in a band and wanted her to be a singer;  but she ends up talking about her father, who wanted her to be a doctor. "And he was right. I feel good helping people.  And then he died." Near tears, she gets up and walks away, but Alex follows her to a small arbor.

Alex flails around trying to find something to talk about, wondering whether to tell her about their letters, longing for her and yet afraid she is not ready for him, wondering if her admission that she doesn't really love Morgan means that she is attracted to him. Finally he somewhat desperately asks if she knows the song that has just started playing in the house, and she says she does, but he doesn't want to hear her sing; "but," she offers:  "I can dance," and holds up her hands. He takes them, and they begin a slow dance.

The intense physicality of this dance is palpable. He is yearning for her; she is drawn to him, yearning for non-stifling affection and relief from her loneliness. He uses his whole body to cradle her, and she responds like a flower opening to the sun. Before their dance, she sat hunched on the porch steps; now her posture is open but she leans into him. He breathes in the scent of her hair, her skin, never quite nuzzling, but so close that it looks like a kiss on her ear, on her neck, on her shoulder. Perhaps he is whispering the words of the song to her:


 * ''I'm very sure this never happened to me before.
 * ''I met you, and now I'm sure this never happened before.
 * ''Now I see, this is the way it's supposed to be.
 * ''I met you and now I see: this is the way it should be.
 * ''This is the way it should be for lovers:
 * ''they shouldn't go it alone.
 * ''It's not so good when you're on your own.
 * ''So come to me. Now we can be what we want to be.
 * I love you, and now I see: this is the way it should be.

Something resonates in Kate too with this song: This is the way it should be. This feels right. Her relationship with Morgan seems all wrong, compared to this.

As they dance, they progress incrementally, tiny movement by tiny movement, from a formal dance posture into an embrace, and as the song ends, he can no longer resist and kisses her, very softly and sweetly. She kisses him back, and the moment extends into the silence.

The bubble is broken by Morgan's voice, exclaiming, "Kate!" He is there with Alex's date, Mona, who looks appalled. Kate and Alex break apart but she merely says that he was telling her about the lake house. Mona says it's late and she wants to go; Alex, looking bemused, says good night to Kate and walks away with Mona.

2006
On Kate's birthday in 2006, she tells her friend and mentor, Dr. Klyczynski, that she pushed away the man in front of her, who wanted to marry her (Morgan), and instead she wants the "one man I can never meet. Him, I would like to give my whole heart to." She explains that he is a pen pal—whom she's never met. "It's nice," she says. "It's safe." Dr. K demands: "he's in prison, isn't he?" Kate laughs and says, "no, he's just guy who lives on a lake. He's an architect." Suddenly, it clicks, and she realizes that her pen pal is the same man she kissed that night at her birthday party two years ago.

The next day, she "says" to Alex: "It was you!" and demands to know why he didn't say anything. Alex, still reeling from the previous night's encounter, says she would have thought he was drunk or crazy or both. She denies it—"I liked you!"—and calls him a coward. This quickly descends into what he terms their "first fight." Subsequent events prove that he was right to hold back; she simply was not ready for him. It was the wrong time for her, if the right person. Indeed, she seems to forget him, and certainly never tries to contact the man she kissed at the party; and apparently Morgan withholds from her the information that her landlord of the lake house is the same man. (Her apparent lack of interest may actually be an effect of the temporal paradox.) In 2006, when Morgan, who is clumsily trying to make up with her after more than a year apart ("Ambush!" she says), accuses her of making out with Alex that night, she says he was just some random guy and it was just a kiss. This is shortly before her birthday, and so she manages to fight with both Morgan and Alex over that kiss within just a couple of days in her 2006 timeline, though apparently none of them fought about it in 2004, when it happened.

Il Mare
Kate and Alex make a date to meet the next day in Kate's time. Kate asks for dinner at an exclusive restaurant that takes reservations months in advance. Alex makes a reservation for them for "two years from tomorrow." Kate dresses up and goes to the restaurant, but Alex doesn't show up. She waits for him all night, until the restaurant closes. She watches the skaters on the ice rink just outside: families, young girls performing alone, and perfectly-matched couples.

The next day, she writes to him: "You weren't there.  You didn't come." He apologizes—"something must have happened"—and asks to try again, but she says no. "It's too late. It already happened.  It didn't work." He begs her not to give up on him, and cites Persuasion for second chances, but she is adamant: "Life is not a book, Alex.  It can be over in a second." She goes on to tell him about an unseasonably warm Valentine's Day in 2006, when she was having lunch with her mother in Daley Plaza and saw a man killed right in front of her. She tried to save him, but

"'…he died in my arms. And I thought: it can't end just like that on Valentine's Day.  And I thought about all the people who love him, waiting at home, who will never see him again.  And then I thought:  what if there is no one?  What if you live your whole life, and no one is waiting?  So I drove to the lake house, looking for any kind of answer—and I found you.  And I let myself get lost—lost in this beautiful fantasy, where time stood still.  But it it's not real, Alex.  I have to learn to live the life that I have got.  Please don't write anymore.  Don't try to find me.  Let me let you go.'"

And she sticks to her resolution. She does not write again, does not go back to the mailbox. Alex keeps writing, but his letters stack up in the mailbox, unread and unanswered. He is clearly devastated but over the next few weeks he realizes that Kate is not yet ready for him. She has yet to experience her year living in the lake house—the one place she felt most like her true self—and perhaps he must wait until that is past. Perhaps living alone in the house for a year, as he has, will help her make peace with her past, as it did for him, and at the end of it, be ready for a new start, and for him, as he is now for her. So he must wait for her.

Daley Plaza
The scene in Daley Plaza on Valentine's Day, 2006, is the pivot around which the entire movie revolves.

Shortly after moving out of the lake house, Kate has lunch with her mother in Daley Plaza at the foot of the Picasso sculpture. It is unseasonably warm. They talk of little things, and her mother admits to reading Kate's dead father's books just so that she can touch them, knowing that he held the book in his hands and that he read the same words on the same pages as she does. It helps her to feel that he is still with her. This touch by proxy, especially of a book, foreshadows this theme throughout the rest of the film.

Suddenly, they hear the screeching tires and chaos of a traffic accident directly in front of them, on Washington Street. Kate calls for an ambulance on her cell phone as she runs to the scene. She drops the cell phone and kneels by a man lying face-down in the street, examining him with her hands. He was hit by a bus.

We next see Kate sitting alone in the on-call room at the hospital. Her mentor, Dr. K, enters and tries to offer comfort for the scene in Daley Plaza. It is, apparently, the first patient Kate has ever lost, and she is devastated. She tried so hard to save him. Dr. K advises her that on her day off, she should get as far away from the hospital as she can, and go somewhere that makes her feel most like herself. The next day, she goes to the lake house, and discovers Alex's reply to the note she had left for the next tenant. It is the beginning of their correspondence.

On February 14, 2006, Alex is walking out of the office he shares with his brother. He is wearing Kate's scarf, and they note the warm weather. Alex invites Henry to have a beer with him that evening, but Henry says he can't: he's taking his girlfriend out for Valentine's Day. Alex stops dead in his tracks. "Wait—say that again." He remembers that last letter Kate wrote to him two years ago, when she told him about the accident she witnessed. He realizes that her year at the lake house is over, and that this time, when they began their correspondence, is the time when she is ready for him. Only he cannot remember where she says that she was that day, so he races to the lake house, where he had left her letters in a box in the attic. He finds the letter, and sees that yes, it was Valentine's Day, 2006, an unseasonably warm day, and that she was in Daley Plaza.

In Kate's timeline, Valentine's Day, 2008, she has just completed a meeting with Henry, whom she has hired to renovate a house—on which Henry has designed, at her request, a glass and steel atrium on the top floor, reminiscent of the lake house. As she is leaving, she notices a drawing on the wall of the lake house. She asks Henry who drew it; he says it was his brother, Alex. She asks if she can get in touch with him, but Henry says, "I'm sorry, he—died. Two years ago today, actually.  There was an accident." Kate's face, moments earlier luminous with joy, now reflects horror, grief, and then suddenly realization. "Where?" she demands.

From this moment, timing is critical. She runs out of the building—Morgan following her, asking her to wait—and races to the lake house, where she furiously writes a letter and puts it in the mailbox. In agony, she collapses to her knees by the mailbox, hoping, praying, and crying.

The scene shifts back to Daley Plaza on that fateful day in 2006, and Alex is standing on the sidewalk across Washington Street from Daley Plaza. Time seems to slow down. He sees Kate sitting under the Picasso with her mother. We hear Kate's voice in her letter that she wrote in 2008:

"'Alex, I know why you didn't show up that night. It was you, at Daley Plaza that day. It was you.  Please don't go.  Just wait.  Please.  Don't look for me.  Don't try to find me.  I love you.  And it's taken me all this time to say it, but I love you.  And if you still care for me, wait for me.  Wait with me.  Just wait.  Wait.  Wait two years, Alex.  Come to the lake house.  I'm here.'"

Alex is standing on the sidewalk, holding her letter in his hand, and for a moment it seems that it is the wrong letter: he takes a step towards her. But the bus passes in front of him. He is still standing on the sidewalk. He has received her 2008 letter, and though he could not resist coming to Daley Plaza, he is content merely to see her from afar, though the longing and love show in his face. He now understands that on this day in 2006, she is still not ready; and in this moment, he has stepped back from the timeline that had cut off his life. They will not touch this day. He waits.

The lake house
The last encounter is at the lake house. They are finally together in the same time, on February 14, 2008. Alex has waited. He has not tried to find her, has waited for her to reach this moment in her life, when she has at last realized that she loves him and she wants him and understands the risks of a real relationship with him, not merely a "safe" life with Morgan. On February 13, 2008, she was not ready. Now she knows that they are soul mates.

Kate, thinking that she is too late and that he is dead, has fallen to her knees by the mailbox in terror. But she sees the flag come down on the mailbox, and hope dawns in her eyes. She hears a vehicle coming up the road, and a door slam. She stands, and we see her through the tall, dead grass staring at the man who is walking towards her. It is, of course, Alex, and he smiles at her. She walks to meet him, hardly believing it: "You waited!"  For reply, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. She clings to him. There are no more words, only joy. After a while, they walk together towards the house—their house—the light passing through each room.

Relationships

 * Kate and Alex
 * Kate and her mother
 * Kate and Dr. K.
 * Kate and her dead father
 * Kate and Morgan
 * Alex and his father
 * Alex and his dead mother
 * Alex and Henry
 * Alex and Mona
 * Alex and Jack
 * Kate and Jack
 * Alex and the house
 * Kate and the house
 * Alex's mother and father and the house

Meeting the right person at the wrong time; meeting the wrong person at the right time and trying to make do;  experiencing the same things in parallel two years apart;  waiting.

Throughout the film there are moments where it is clear that no matter how hard they try, Kate and Morgan aren't right for each other. Kate doesn't like to make a big deal of birthdays; Morgan throws her a surprise party. Kate doesn't like his Victorian house; she prefers the glass and steel structure of the lake house. Kate likes old movies; Morgan asks her to turn the television down so that he can work. They also hide things from each other, and then spring them suddenly on the other, which they refer to as "ambush:" the birthday party, Morgan's first visit to Chicago, and Kate's purchasing of the house in Chicago for renovation. Morgan doesn't listen to Kate; during his first visit to Chicago, he ignores (or doesn't hear) her lack of interest in dinner, and then ignores her when she tries to tell him that Il Mare isn't a good place to drop in. Morgan doesn't even remember to get her a Valentine's Day card after they have been living together for over a year. He never makes her laugh, and in 2004, at her birthday, Kate says to Alex that her first love, when she was a teenager, was probably her "only one." Morgan sees what he wants to see in Kate. He doesn't see her true self; she therefore suppresses herself to keep the peace and as a result becomes frustrated and unhappy.

Mona and Alex are similarly disjointed; Mona has a terrible crush on him, but he can't seem to respond in kind. When Morgan meets them, he notices Mona's boots right away, but Alex hadn't noticed them, even though Mona had gotten them at his suggestion. And Mona has failed to pick up on the fact that Jack is a female, referring to her as "him"—a moment before Morgan compliments her on her boots, as Alex failed to do.

Both Morgan and Mona are great people. They are everything most people would want in a mate. But neither is right for Kate or Alex. They are the wrong people at the right time.

Taglines

 * It's nice.
 * It's terrible.
 * Ambush!
 * What does time have to do with it?
 * It was you!
 * Wait.
 * Don't try to find me.
 * You waited!

Timestamps
total time, not counting end credits= 1:34:55 or 94.9 total time, counting end credits= 1:38:20 or 98.3


 * .3333 x 94.9 = 31.6 minutes = 31:36
 * 31:36 Alex is driving south with the tree in the back of his truck
 * .3333 x 98.3 = 32.7 minutes = 32:35
 * 32:35 Kate is pulling into her mother's driveway; Alex has just promised, "I'll take care of you.
 * 37:13-38:05 scene at train station .40
 * 50:24 door slams .53
 * 51:30 start of long take
 * 55:16 end of long take, start of arbor scene
 * 58:30-41 kiss .61
 * 59:18 end of scene .62
 * .6666 x 94.9 = 63.3 minutes = 1:03:33
 * 1:03:33 Alex handing coffee to his father; just finished writing to Kate in hospital cafeteria about his father not coming to his mother's funeral.
 * .6666 x 98.3 = 65.5 minutes = 1:05:30
 * 1:05:30 Simon's light lecture: "The light in Barcelona is quite different from the light in Tokyo."

Unanswered questions
Leaving aside the temporal paradox issues, including the dog, there are some other holes in the screenplay or methods of direction which can be bothersome.

Most notable is the creation of conversations between the protagonists, of a type that you might find in email exchanges and online chat or even telephone conversations. Computer technology is notably absent from this movie. Real letters don't allow for this give-and-take, and Kate and Alex are constrained by the necessity of visiting the mailbox personally to deliver their letters. They can of course exchange a series of short notes if they are both there at the same time (which they do very early), but most of their exchanges in the film are portrayed as letters that start out lengthy and get shorter and shorter replies. They are shown a few times in the same place in their different times, but talking to each other across the void. It's a very nice cinematic effect but it doesn't match the mode of the letters—which, because of their physical reality, are a central underlying aspect of the film.

Also, why doesn't the post office ever take any of the letters, especially when they are piling up at the end of 2004? Kate received postal deliveries there; it is the reason she leaves a note for the next tenant, the premise of the whole movie. Perhaps Alex used a post office box and never signed up for mail delivery.

When did Kate's father die? The book he gave he was pristine in 2004 when she left it at the train station, but he certainly had died by July 2004, when she told Alex. Were there omitted scenes with Kate's father that were removed from the film?

What is Kate doing during 2005 while living at the lake house? She never mentions that she was working at this time; and Morgan says, in 2004, that they are looking for a lake house for the time after she has finished her residency at Madison. In early 2006, when she moves out, she is taking a new job in Chicago, at too great a distance for a commute.

Alternative theory on the dog: She is an alien. She can exist in two places at once, can play chess, and knows just the right moment to get Alex out of having to agree to go on a date with Mona, and lead him to Kate instead. She even knows how to perform an introduction.

Personal analysis
This film really resonates with me. I can think of three reasons: (1) I am always a sucker for timeline paradoxes, if not actual time travel;  (2) I love soul mate stories;  (3)  the themes of isolation and timing.

This last, of course, is the most compelling. I am very isolated—more so than usual this week when I saw this movie because the rest of my family was out of town and I was completely alone in the house for a week. And I yearn for my soul mate, though I know that my illness has made this the "wrong time" for me to meet my soul mate—and it has been for a decade, and will be for another couple of years at least. I have also had the experience of falling in love through letters. So I can really empathize with both Kate and Alex as they fall in love and yet are trapped by bad timing.

What overeducated, single, thirty-something woman can resist the idea that there is a loving, lonely, good-looking, well-educated man out there who is her soul mate and wants to break down barriers to get to her and take care of her forever, and yet who also has the courage to wait? And who likes writing letters? And what woman wouldn't swoon to be kissed like that?

Of course, the real key is that he is her soul mate; Morgan, after all, fit many of those criteria. Poor Morgan: he loved her, and yet he stifled her. But their feelings were not in unison, their tastes were not similar, and Kate's heart was not open to him.

actors
I think both Reeves and Bullock are superb actors. They really make the characters come alive. The emotions in Bullock's face as her Kate hears that Alex is dead, and then puts it all together, is one of the most convincing moments I've ever seen on screen. She plays Kate's introspection and moroseness without making it look like an unhealthy depression. Her voice in her letters spoken aloud, especially the last one, reflects her raw emotions that she can't share with anyone but Alex.

As for Reeves, I've heard it said for years that he can't act, that his deliveries are wooden, that he plays the same character in all his movies. But in this film, Reeves makes Alex come alive through his eyes. Whenever he sees Kate—at the train station, at the birthday party, at Daley Plaza—he looks at her like a drowning man seeing his only salvation. The naked longing and yearning in his eyes is palpable. But when he finally meets her at the lake house, the longing is replaced by a simple joy that lights his whole face. His eyes also reflect hurt, grief, and love when dealing with his father. When he breaks down after his father's death, his anguish doesn't feel like acting; it feels real. It is very fine acting.

The central scene where Kate and Alex talk on the steps of the porch at her 2004 birthday party is perhaps the best example of their acting. Critics refer to this as "chemistry" (while wondering how they achieved that chemistry when they spend most of the film apart), but it is more than chemistry. Through nearly four minutes of uncut, static footage shot in one take with one stationary camera, they talk, of little things and big things, and make the dialogue real. It really is two people talking, not scripted dialogue. Alex in particular is real in this scene; he feels so awkward, desperately wanting to make a connection with her, afraid to tell her about their letters, and feeling all the painful difficulty of a clichéd first meeting and trying to find something to talk about. Yet it is not clichéd.