A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Lake House

Date Viewed: 6/24/06

Details:

Keanu Reeves (Alex Wyler)

Sandra Bullock (Kate Forster)

Shohreh Aghdashloo

Christopher Plummer (Simon Wyler)

Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Henry Wyler)

Dylan Walsh

Director: Alejandro Agresti

Screenplay: David Auburn (from the 2000 Korean film Siworae, by Eun-Jeong Kim and Ji-na Yeo)

Score: 3/4

The Review: Decent romantic fantasy with a science fiction twist.

Architect and builder Alex Wyler (Reeves) takes over an attractive, glass-walled lake-side residence and finds a note in the mailbox from the "previous" resident, physician Kate Forster (Bullock), who gives a forwarding address for any mail that the post office might miss, and an apology for something that hasn't happened yet. Huh? Well, it soon becomes apparent that this mailbox has something odd about it, and the (very) slowly-developing romance between the two professionals is skipping time -- two years, to be exact, since Wyler is in 2004 "while" Forster is in 2006. Only two years, you think? How trivial. But once you get past the occasional confusions of a multi-time-threaded story -- which should be a breeze for anyone with science-fiction reading habits -- one of the more intriguing aspects of this movie is just how long and distancing two years is in most human timelines.

If this sounds like it might be a remake of the time-travel romance Somewhere in Time (1980, with Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and (curiously) Christopher Plummer), don't fret -- or do fret, depending on whether you didn't like it or did (respectively, maybe). The only thing in common is a bit of manipulation along the time line, and some concept or gadgetry to effect translation -- otherwise the two romances have little conceptual overlap.

There's a decent supporting cast, with Plummer as Wyler's demanding architect father, Moss-Bachrach (who looks very familiar) as his brother, Aghdashloo as Kate's predecessor and mentor at the hospital, and Walsh as Kate's erstwhile suitor.

The connection to Chicago architecture makes the movie all the more watchable, even if you're not all that interested in a time-crossed romance: from a Frank Lloyd Wright-like lake house in glass, to the icons of early 20th-century Chicago buildings -- excellent cinematography, throughout -- and from the venerable curmudgeon architect who knew Wright and his other contemporaries, to his sons who might try to go into the same business together. The texture of Chicago comes across clearly, and a not unattractive city emerges in these snapshots.

The movie generally supports a specific physical model of time -- one of the parallel universe models with limited branching and an odd sort of determinism -- although the implementation of this model in the movie is not entirely consistent: the tree presents a problem, especially how it's presented. The mailbox as chronological wormhole is a cute touch. And the literary connection with Jane Austen's Persuasion is quite clever.

(25-Jun-06)

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