The Lake House
Thursday, June 26th, 2008I found this movie are worth a watch.
I 1st watch this at Genting High last year December..in the hotel room..haha
kinda bored when i 1st watch it and doesnt know what exactly its about.
Today,well not today..few days ago..i watch it on HBO
from the beginning till the end..and slowly i get to understand the story,and the true romance in it..touching..
here i copied a synopsis from a web..more or less the whole story are here..just that you cant experience how the touching and romantic parts feels like..
Seriously, I almost cry in the end thou..xD
First time I wud sit down for 2 hours watching a Romance based movie..hard to bliv myself either..haha
It’s a winter morning in 2006, and Dr. Kate Forster and her dog
"Jack" are leaving suburban Illinois, where Kate completed her
residency, as she prepares to take a job at a busy Chicago hospital.
She is reluctant to leave behind the refuge of the woods and the
beautiful house she’s been renting, an artfully designed home with
glass walls that overlook a placid lake.
As she goes, Kate leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant,
asking whomever to forward her mail and pointing out that the
paint-imbedded paw prints on the walkway leading into the house were
already there when she arrived.
Alex Wyler is a talented but frustrated architect supervising the
construction of cookie-cutter condos at a nearby site. He arrives at
the lake house and finds it neglected - and with no signs of paw prints
anywhere. The house has special meaning for Alex, having been built by
his estranged father, a celebrated architect who let his career grow at
the expense of his family, and himself. Like Kate, Alex feels a sense
of peace at the lake house and commits to restoring it. He doesn’t
think twice about Kate’s note until days later when, as he paints the
walkway’s railings, a stray dog runs through his paint and leaves fresh
paw prints right where Kate said they would be.
Baffled, Alex writes her back, pointing out that the house was
unoccupied before he came and wondering how she could have known about
paw prints that weren’t yet there. Kate, who just left the house a week
earlier, imagines he is playing some kind of joke on her, and she fires
back a curt reply. Just for argument’s sake, she asks, what day is it
there? "April 14th, 2004," Alex answers. But for Kate, it’s April 14th,
2006. The same day, two years apart.
As Kate and Alex continue their correspondence through the lake
house’s mystical mailbox, they confirm that they are, strange as it may
seem, living two years apart, and each at a time in their lives when
they’re struggling to make a new start. Sharing this unusual bond, they
reveal more of themselves to one another with each passing week.
In one of her letters, Kate mentions a Jane Austen book, Persuasion,
she had accidentally left at a train station in 2004. Alex goes to the
station and finds it there on a bench. Seeing Kate for the first time
as she boards the train, Alex keeps the book, deciding he will return
it to her in person some day. Alex then sends Kate an annotated map of
Chicago and invites her to take a walking tour of his favorite places
one Saturday morning. Somewhere near the end of the journey, Kate finds
a message sprayed as graffiti on a wall: "Kate, I am here with you.
Thank you for a lovely Saturday together."
Determined to bridge the distance between them at last and unravel
the mystery behind their extraordinary connection, they tempt fate by
arranging to meet. Alex makes a reservation at Il Mare (Italian for
"The Sea"), an elegant restaurant (whose name is an homage to the
original Korean motion picture), for a date two years in Alex’s future
— but only a day away for Kate. When she shows up full of wonderful
expectations for their dinner date, however, she waits- but Alex fails
to appear.
Kate is heartbroken, and she begins to wonder if she has been making
a mistake focusing so much of her emotional energy on a man who, in her
time, had clearly moved on. She tells Alex about a day right after she
left the lake house, an unusually warm Valentine’s Day when she’d
witnessed a terrible traffic accident and held a man who died in her
arms. Life was too short, she now knew, to wait for what might be. She
asks Alex not to contact her again, to "Let me let you go", and stops
coming to the mailbox for his letters.
Alex decides to quit the lakehouse and move in with his brother in
Chicago, leaving all of Kate’s letters packed neatly in a box in the
attic. The dog Jack runs away as Alex packs — only to appear at the
side of Kate’s old boyfriend Morgan, just after Alex passes along the
house keys, reminding him of Kate’s wishes to one day live on the lake.
The 2006 Kate renews her relationship with Morgan, and they live
together in her Chicago apartment for over a year. One afternoon,
irritated with his inattention and preoccupation with work, she walks
into the bedroom, where a hollow-sounding area under a floorboard
finally gets her attention. Stepping hard on one end, she pops the
board loose, revealing a small package hidden underneath. It is the
Jane Austen book (Persuasion)
Alex retrieved for her from the train station. He has left a flower
marking a specific passage: "There could have been no two hearts so
open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison…." Kate holds
the book to her heart.
One unusually warm winter day, Alex and his brother leave their
office, heading out to lunch. When Alex suggests they meet up after
work for a beer, Henry reminds him that it’s Valentine’s Day and he has
plans with his girlfriend. Valentine’s Day 2006…something clicks in
Alex’s memory and he takes off for the lake house.
For Kate, it’s Valentine’s Day 2008, and she and Morgan arrange to
meet at an architectural firm to review renovation plans for an old
apartment she wants to buy. Morgan, unenthused about both the project
and the idea of moving, has been so busy with work, he has forgotten to
get Kate a card. After they meet with the architect, Kate notices an
illustration hanging on the conference room wall -it’s the lake house.
The young man explains that it was drawn by his brother Alex Wyler, who
by coincidence was killed in a traffic accident two years ago to the
day.
Kate quickly realizes why Alex never met her at the restaurant; he
was killed the day they first began their correspondence - the day she
sought solace at the lake house after witnessing a horrible traffic
accident.
She rushes to the lake house, leaving a bewildered Morgan behind,
and frantically writes a note for Alex. Don’t go looking for her, she
begs him. Wait for another two years and come to the lake house,
instead. It is in this very note, in fact, that she first explicitly
professes her love to him. She puts the note into the mailbox and
raises the flag.
But Alex has gone off to find her - and sees her sitting there in
Daley Plaza on that unseasonably mild Valentine’s Day afternoon in
2006. As he seems about to step into the street, he raises his hand and
rereads the note from Kate, begging him to wait for her - and wisely
decides to remain on the sidewalk, splitting himself off from the
original timeline and avoiding a heart-rending tragedy for both Kate
and Alex’s younger brother Henry.
Kate kneels by the mailbox, sure she was too late. But then the
mailbox flag slowly lowers - Alex has picked up her note. Soon she sees
a vehicle arriving beyond the high grass and then a figure walking
toward her on the gravel path, and it turns out to be Alex. "You
waited!", she cries as they begin to kiss each other. And then they
turn and, still huddled together, proceed up the wooden walkway toward
the waiting lakehouse.
