The Lake House is a rare feat in cinema. It is simultaneously both hopelessly romantic and deeply cynical. Based on the original Il Mare (2000), it is a deeply layered work that excels well past the conventional Hollywood romance where the only two questions are “Will They or Won’t They?” and “Who Gives a Crap?” It’s only a matter of time until someone writes a serious 300 page dissertation on The Lake House and all of its philosophical and metaphysical connotations. Until then, allow me to expand on what people may be missing.

The film begins with Keanu Reeves moving into a house built atop Lake Michigan in the year 2004. We also meet Sandra Bullock, in 2006, where she has recently moved out of the same lake house to a newly constructed apartment in Chicago. She leaves a letter in the mailbox asking the next tenant to forward her mail along. However, the magical mailbox that stands in the walkway sends her letter back two years to the newly arrived tenant, Keanu. Curious, he responds. As their letters begin to travel back and forth through time, never leaving that magical mailbox, Keanu and Sandra begin to fall in love. It seems silly, and an easy target for a shallow laugh, but I believe it to be the most honest and real depiction of life and love in a long time. Bear with me.

As a film at face value, it’s hugely entertaining. Constantly jumping back and forth between 2004 and 2006, the audience is forced to stay on their toes, trying to figure out which year it is, and wondering where the other person is at whatever time it happens to be. Forcing the audience to participate in the construction of the narrative is always more engaging than just spelling it all out for them. Allow me now to spell it out for you just why this film goes above and beyond traditional film romance.

Let us start by examining the relationships both Keanu and Sandra have with the other characters in the film. They have a relationship with their jobs. She is a doctor. He is an architect. They are both successful in this relationship with their career, but are left unfulfilled. Both are dating other beautiful, charismatic successful individuals, although those relationships are tepid, although bearable. Both keep in contact with a parent. Keanu has his father, Sandra her mother. And both have friends they’ve acquired. Sandra has a friendship with a fellow doctor, Keanu with his brother/business partner. Yet all these relationships feel empty, for them and for the audience.

The most real relationship, the most dynamic and interesting, is the exchange they have between one another. How confounding to find that the deepest connection in your life is also the most absurd and unattainable. It’s more than just two people reading love letters two years apart. It’s two people connecting, all while trying to find one another, in the physical NOW.

So why do people brush off this film as just another love story? Perhaps they believe the two-year difference is a contrived obstacle. Sure. But if we’re willing to accept Jennifer Aniston being a lonely woman in all of her movies, then why not accept a time traveling mailbox love story? Time, like love, is a human concept / constraint. It’s only fitting that a film finally comes out that makes a connection between the two. Descartes speaks of the only sure thing being existence itself. What tangible proof is there that love, or time, is a real tangible thing, and not something constructed by meek minds to make sense of impossible concepts? It’s silly to believe that two people can make a connection living two years apart. And for most people, the absurdity of the situation will distance them from taking the film seriously. However, once one realizes that love is as silly and improbable in real time (for example, the type of love that takes place on a speeding bus), one can start to realize that love can exist and not exist all at once. The film ends up being as relatable and true as any other love story, real or cinematic. It’s the metaphysical undertones that excel The Lake House past other love stories to become a nihilistic masterpiece.

-Nikita Burdein