Theory of relativity
The Lake House
Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock
Directed by Alejandro Agresti
Warner Brothers, 2006
Featuring anachronistic elements all throughout an otherwise stale love story, "The Lake House" tackles the subjectivity of time: that time is just a perception.
Sandra Bullock's Kate Foster is an emotionally preoccupied Chicago doctor who begins writing letters with Keanu Reeves' Alex Wyler, an architect who is living in the same lake house she rented two years earlier.
Just consider that the movie is a series of disjointed facts, events and circumstances relating the present to the past through a magical mailbox. Kate and Alex write letters to each other and later exchange dialogues onscreen as if they're both there present.
The film is surely booed by realists who would always argue that art takes off from common sense, logic, and all it entails. The film is devoid of these elements because it rather seeks to do something else.
The use of the time lapse is not in itself a lapse, but a reinforcing element to back up the contention that love defies time. That is all. And when we begin discussing love, thus, we stop asking questions.
And so we proceed to something else. The gist of this melodrama lies in the two-year gap between the two characters' respective time frames. Kate is currently living in 2006; Wyler in 2004.
The factor of time lapse is both interesting and tragically conceited. While it thrills us with how two people take liberties at pursuing their romance across time and space, it clouds the whole idea of logic; thus it must be perceived neither as rational nor realistic (which is a usual characteristic of something we watch with our money).
It can rather be appreciated with the way we see the depth of the feelings and emotionality of two people who are estranged from their own worlds but are enamored by a person beyond time and space (it sounds like an extra-terrestrial love story but it's not).
Foster and Wyler are what we may call "may sariling mundo," literally and figuratively because they do not live in the present. They make their own worlds somewhere else; their togetherness is hinged at each other's absence or lack of presence. And in the end they succeed. All in the absence of logic, or common sense.
While the original "Speed" stars make a wonderful chemistry onscreen, the audience is left mesmerized by how he can weave together disjointed facts, lacking sense and even sensibility.
Perhaps falling under the genre now called metafiction, "The Lake House," originally "Il Mare" by an Asian author, tries to demystify the subjectivity [read: relativity] of time, which to some people nowadays is not a reality but a mere perception.
Deconstructed realities is now an apparent trend in the literary field, which permeates books, films, and other available media. Realities are said to be only perceptions, something only perceived by the senses. So if everything is only perceived as everything is only felt or made out by all the senses, what is real, therefore?
Of course, we'll leave this question unanswered, as this film leaves us hanging the rest of our movie time. What matters more is the depth of thought or feeling of the human being. For one, it is so unrealistic for Kate to communicate with Alex, who is living "now" two years earlier. But what really binds them is the affinity to the same lake house, which has enchanted their persons for life.
"Lake House" slyly tells us that what matters more is the endearment of the heart, not any other preoccupation as time, nature, environment, or circumstances. What must rattle us is what we really feel.
Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock
Directed by Alejandro Agresti
Warner Brothers, 2006
Featuring anachronistic elements all throughout an otherwise stale love story, "The Lake House" tackles the subjectivity of time: that time is just a perception.
Sandra Bullock's Kate Foster is an emotionally preoccupied Chicago doctor who begins writing letters with Keanu Reeves' Alex Wyler, an architect who is living in the same lake house she rented two years earlier.
Just consider that the movie is a series of disjointed facts, events and circumstances relating the present to the past through a magical mailbox. Kate and Alex write letters to each other and later exchange dialogues onscreen as if they're both there present.
The film is surely booed by realists who would always argue that art takes off from common sense, logic, and all it entails. The film is devoid of these elements because it rather seeks to do something else.
The use of the time lapse is not in itself a lapse, but a reinforcing element to back up the contention that love defies time. That is all. And when we begin discussing love, thus, we stop asking questions.
And so we proceed to something else. The gist of this melodrama lies in the two-year gap between the two characters' respective time frames. Kate is currently living in 2006; Wyler in 2004.
The factor of time lapse is both interesting and tragically conceited. While it thrills us with how two people take liberties at pursuing their romance across time and space, it clouds the whole idea of logic; thus it must be perceived neither as rational nor realistic (which is a usual characteristic of something we watch with our money).
It can rather be appreciated with the way we see the depth of the feelings and emotionality of two people who are estranged from their own worlds but are enamored by a person beyond time and space (it sounds like an extra-terrestrial love story but it's not).
Foster and Wyler are what we may call "may sariling mundo," literally and figuratively because they do not live in the present. They make their own worlds somewhere else; their togetherness is hinged at each other's absence or lack of presence. And in the end they succeed. All in the absence of logic, or common sense.
While the original "Speed" stars make a wonderful chemistry onscreen, the audience is left mesmerized by how he can weave together disjointed facts, lacking sense and even sensibility.
Perhaps falling under the genre now called metafiction, "The Lake House," originally "Il Mare" by an Asian author, tries to demystify the subjectivity [read: relativity] of time, which to some people nowadays is not a reality but a mere perception.
Deconstructed realities is now an apparent trend in the literary field, which permeates books, films, and other available media. Realities are said to be only perceptions, something only perceived by the senses. So if everything is only perceived as everything is only felt or made out by all the senses, what is real, therefore?
Of course, we'll leave this question unanswered, as this film leaves us hanging the rest of our movie time. What matters more is the depth of thought or feeling of the human being. For one, it is so unrealistic for Kate to communicate with Alex, who is living "now" two years earlier. But what really binds them is the affinity to the same lake house, which has enchanted their persons for life.
"Lake House" slyly tells us that what matters more is the endearment of the heart, not any other preoccupation as time, nature, environment, or circumstances. What must rattle us is what we really feel.
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