Table Of Content
Thus, she seeks to change the address to her present residence in Chicago. While the letter is not meant for Alex, he reads it and writes an impeccable reply. Meanwhile, while lazing in a park on Valentine’s Day, Kate sees a hit-and-run incident. However, as the lake house, and especially its adjacent mailbox, stay in a temporal flux, Kate establishes communication with the mysterious Alex (Keanu Reeves), who claims to live two years in the past.
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock Are Reunited in 'The Lake House'
Alex makes a reservation at a restaurant two years in advance for him, but the next day for Kate. Heartbroken, Kate ends their relationship and stops visiting the lake house to settle for a future with Morgan. Alex places their letters in a box in the house’s attic, like what Kate described in her first letter, and moves in with his brother Henry, also an architect. After filming, the house was required to be removed, and a simple fishing dock was put in its place.[4] The downtown scenes are in The Loop.
Is Kate Imaginging/Dreaming of Alex In The End?
She was already quite lonesome, and she thought that was not how Valentine’s Day should have ended. Therefore, more than Alex’s physical presence, her belief in romance propels the story forward. The idea leads her to the mailbox, which becomes a point in her habitual fantasizing. Gradually, Kate lost herself in the fantasy where time stood still. However, as she stresses towards the end of the confession, Kate has learned to live the life she has got (and not think about what she is missing out on).
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Realizing Alex was the man she failed to save at Daley Plaza, Kate rushes to the lake house herself and writes a frantic message to Alex begging him to wait two years and find her at the lake house. Alex does find Kate in Daley Plaza but stops himself from greeting her having received her letter. A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. No, Kate and Alex do not end up together, even if the final minutes suggest the contrary. While Kate desperately looks for a reply in the mailbox, she finds nothing, breaking into tears. Shortly after, Alex walks through the woods, and the lovers embrace for a picture-perfect ending.
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But the movie is, above all, a showcase for its stars, who seem gratifyingly comfortable in their own skin and delighted to be in each other's company again, in another deeply silly, effortlessly entertaining movie. "Not much has changed," Kate writes to him at one point, when he asks what things are like in the future. His general lack of curiosity — he doesn't ask who won the presidential election or the World Series, or pester her for stock market tips — is in keeping with the fuzziness of the film's conceit.
If you approach it with a rational, skeptical mind, "The Lake House" will fall apart almost immediately. You'll just have to accept that a book can travel through the mail to a date earlier than the one printed on its copyright page, and that a fancy Chicago restaurant will hold an unconfirmed reservation for two years. In 2006, physician Kate Forster leaves a lake house she has been renting near Chicago and starts a job at a downtown hospital.
Thanks to the premonition of Alex’s death, Kate forbids him to cross the road at the park in a letter she writes for him. Voila, Alex does not cross the road, and he remains alive at the end. While a happy ending is what the creative heads aimed for the story, they did not tie all the loose ends. The story begins in 2006, when Kate Forster (Bullock), a lonely doctor, begins writing letters to the frustrated architect Alex Wyler (Reeves) who lives in her former home, only to discover that they're living two years apart.
They do arrange one date, which involves them in some kind of time-loop misunderstanding, I think. I mean, I understand the event she refers to, but not whether it is a necessary event or can be prevented.
She leaves a note in the mailbox asking the next tenant to forward her mail and explaining that the painted-on pawprints on the front walkway were there when she moved in as was the box in the attic. "The Lake House," a wondrously illogical time-travel romance directed by Alejandro Agresti, is notable mainly for reuniting Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, who together survived a harrowing bus ride in "Speed." That was 12 years ago — how time flies! — and since then they have gone their separate movie-star ways, into the "Miss Congeniality" and "Matrix" franchises, as well as into a startlingly long list of bad movies, of which I will mention only "Hope Floats" and "Sweet November." Supposedly letter-bound, the couple's conversations come across more like instant messaging, while Kate's lack of investigative skills or inquisitiveness will appal even the most half-hearted of romantic stalkers. So while the general public has not, as far as I can tell, been clamoring for a reunion, "The Lake House" nonetheless functions as a fascinating experiment. Is the chemistry — or, given that "Speed" was all about the velocity of bodies in motion, the physics — still there?
Then, Kate discovers that the person who dies on the streets on February 14, 2006, is the same person who kissed him at the party. After the discovery, Kate’s mind spirals, and she starts living in unfinished fantasies of the past. As Kate tells Alex earlier in the story, he died in the accident, while she created a story around him to cope with the trauma. However, this reading would be natural if not for the final moments, where Alex seems to be quite alive as he hugs and kisses Kate.
"The Lake House," while completely preposterous, is not without charm. At the start, Ms. Bullock's character, Kate, a stressed-out physician who has just completed her residency, moves out of the architectural curiosity that gives the picture its title, leaving a note in the mailbox for the next tenant. That would be Mr. Reeves's Alex, a soulful real estate developer who turns out actually to be the previous tenant.
The mailbox eventually gets into the act by raising and lowering its own little red flag. The two people come to love each other, and this process involves the movie's second impossibility. While having lunch in Daley Plaza on Valentine’s Day, 2006, Kate witnesses a man get hit by a car and tries but fails to save him.
It is, although in this case the viewer will also have to grapple with a heavy dose of Hollywood metaphysics, which keeps the leads apart for most of the movie. Sandra Bullock is an enormously likable actor in the right role, and so is Keanu Reeves, although here they're both required to be marginally depressed because of events in their current (but not simultaneous) lives. Many of his problems circle around his father, Louis Wyler (Christopher Plummer), a famous Chicago architect. The old man is an egocentric genius who designed the Lake House, which his son dislikes because, like Louis himself, it lives in isolation; there aren't even any stairs to get down to the water. The plot of The Lake House is a little too convoluted, and the film fails to pull off the sweeping romance it aims for. Maybe I'm just overly romantic or sentimental or just plain naive, but I probably liked The Lake House more than I should have.
The scenes where Kate and Morgan go to Henry's office, and Kate's dramatic exit down the stairs, were filmed at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The scene where Henry and Alex talk on the street after being in their father's office was filmed on the 400 block of South Michigan Ave, in front of the Fine Arts Building and the Auditorium Theater. The scene where Kate gets stood-up is in Millennium Park at the Park Grill. The bar scene in the Loop where Kate is seen sitting on the barstool, speaking with the woman at the wooden bar, is the real "Millers Pub" located at 134 S Wabash Ave, Chicago, IL 60603.
Kate tries to forget Alex, but discovering the copy of ‘Persuasion’ brings back Alex’s memory, and her mind starts spiraling again. In that way, the movie pays homage to the timeless Jane Austen novel. If Kate does not speak to Alex before the February 2006 accident, how can she prevent Alex’s fatality? Therefore, in all probability, Alex has been dead since the beginning of the story. Seemingly, Alex and Kate meet sometime between 2004 and 2006, on the eve of Kate’s birthday. After catching Kate kissing Alex, Kate’s committal relationship with Morgan goes through some trouble.
With the revelation that the mailbox acts as a time machine, Kate’s epistolary time warp romance with Alex reaches an equilibrium, and they long to meet each other. At the lake house, Kate is distraught with grief that she failed to save Alex and collapses to her knees at the mailbox. However, as the protagonists inhabit different timelines (which may as well indicate their respective states of mind — while Alex lives in the past of his memories, Kate lives in the future of her aspirations), the present seems challenging to grasp. In other words, Kate’s past is Alex’s future, as it is a timeless present for the audience. Curiously, in the end, it is Kate who seems to be living in the past, holding on to the memories of Alex.
