Keanu Reeves Week: The Lake House (2007)

THIS (TIME) MACHINE KILLS REALISTS

by Bebe Ballroom

I’ve been staying with my grandmother in a retirement community for the elderly and the disabled. I am neither elderly nor disabled and so I am not actually allowed to be here. It’s sort of like the ill-advised movie In Her Shoes starring Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz except that this is rural Missouri and I’m not Cameron Diaz.

Many of the residents spend all day on their front porches, especially now with the temperate season. They know I’m here, they see my busted-ass eggplant-colored van, all my earthly possessions stacked in boxes and tote bags in the back, hidden beneath an impossibly bright Indian area rug. Occasionally I’ll raise the back to switch out boots for ballet flats or sweater dresses for sundresses. The residents stare at me as I locate certain accessories or art supplies.

On Sundays, we watch movies, mostly her choice. We’ve watched Sleepless in Seattle and Terms of Endearment and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Double Jeopardy, which my Grandma calls “Double Indemnity,” every time. About twenty-five minutes into the The Lake House, my Grandma says, “Either I’m not smart enough to understand what’s going on or this movie is stupid.”

“It’s not the first option, Gramma.”

Every time travel film exists in what is, as far as we know, an impossible world. Most don’t mind an overlooked detail or error in topography. The boundaries of the world need not be fully exposed, but the foundation should be strong. In this way, The Lake House is that one little pig’s house that was built of straw. It contradicts itself. The gaffer or the publicist or the caterer could have pointed out why the world of the film does not work, why the depiction of the letter exchanges does not work, why the voice-over does not work, but either no one did or no one cared.

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock reunite for the first time since Speed, the awesome ‘90s opus about a city bus that’s gonna explode if it goes under 50 mph, which is an example of movie with a plot more sound than that of The Lake House. The film is about a working man, a working woman, a lake house, a dog, and a mailbox. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is a time machine.

Sandra Bullock plays a doctor named Kate Forester. Keanu Reeves plays an architect named Alex Wyler. They lead separate, lonely lives in the Chicago area. Kate and Alex become pen pals and tell their friends they’re in a long distance relationship. What they don’t tell their friends, and who could blame them, is that an enchanted mailbox is allowing them to communicate two years apart.

“I like Keanu Reeves, don’t you?” Grandma says.
“Not particularly, no.”
“There’s one movie I really like him in. Oh he’s so good in it. What is it!”
“Something’s Gotta Give.”
“What? No. It’s got Jack Nicholson in it.”
“Something’s Gotta Give.”
“I told you, that’s not it.”
“Are you thinking of As Good As It Gets?”
“Yup, that’s the one. I just love Keanu Reeves in that, even if he does play a gay man! And he’s got that little dog, don’t you just love the dog?”
“Greg Kinnear.”
“What?”
“The dog is great.”

The lake house was designed by Alex’s father, a pompous, aging horse’s ass played by Christopher Plummer (who my grandmother is convinced is Charlton Heston). The house is beautiful and on stilts, made mostly of windows, and even has a tree growing out the middle of it. The tree is displayed by a remote that actually pulls the house apart to reveal the tree. It’s 2004, the house has been “empty for years”. It’s hilarious how young people in romantic comedies are content to sit on piles and piles of cash. My family would have lost the lake house to one addiction or another decades ago.

The format of the movie seems to be as follows: show Kate being a doctor, show Alex being an architect, show Kate tolerating her boyfriend, show Alex tolerating his father. Between these scenes, are more scenes in which Kate is alone and Alex is alone. Actually, they are not alone, because there is a dog. The same dog. Yes, they are strangers… separated by two years… both with the exact same dog.

“Poor Jack’s really confused,” my grandmother says.
“He’s the Mrs. Doubtfire of dogs,” I say.

In the scenes where they are alone, they do lonely people things like eating for one or playing chess with themselves or brushing their teeth in a tiny bathroom. My favorite of these scenes is the one where Alex has made himself some sort of stew or curry or gumbo or something and it is steaming and he says, “Come to papa!” as he pours it from the pot into his bowl. Haha! It’s hilarious!

It’s during the times that they are alone that we hear their letters to one another, through voice-over of each person reading the letter they wrote. The magic mailbox belongs to the lake house. The first letter is left from Kate to Alex, greeting the next tenant and requesting him to forward her mail to the inner city Chicago address she provides. I’m still superbly confused about the precise deliverance of the timemail. Alex responds to Kate at her new address, so I assume that mailbox must also compromise time. But then it shows Kate receiving mail at the lake house mailbox, which is empty in 2006. So theoretically, she is driving out there every time, and reaching into the small metal vortex to retrieve something written two years ago.

The script takes care to drop some Dostoevsky, a Kerouac reference, an Austen novel as a plot device, and the words of Nietzsche. The presence of such elevated works in this film seem about as natural as shotguns at the birthday parties of children.

“What year is it?” my grandma keeps asking. The answer is 2004 if Keanu Reeves is on-screen and 2006 if Sandra Bullock is on-screen. Kate in 2006 communicates with Alex in 2004 and 2004 Alex communicates with 2006 Alex but 2006 Alex does not communicate with 2006 Kate or the other way around. But time is passing as the film progresses, even between their divided years. So at some point in the film, Alex must be in 2005 and Kate must be in 2007.

At two points in the film, Kate stands outside the lake house mailbox, writing messages and putting them in the mailbox and raising the red mailbox flag. The flag moves up or down before Kate’s eyes in the year 2006 to indicate that Alex is receiving the message, standing in the same spot in 2004. The flag raises up and down like the sound of a google chat notifier ding.

Questions, there are many. Here’s five:

1. Are both mailboxes time machines?
2. Does mail cost more to send through the time-space continuum or is it just the difference from 2004 first class mail to 2006 first class mail?
3. At what point do they not even bother with stamps at all?
4. What federal laws are they breaking?
5. How fucking confused are two mailmen somewhere?

Approximately halfway through the film, they start communicating in sentences. No, less even! Whereas they had previously conversed in entire letters, now they are saying things like:
“I like candied apples.”
“Oh do you?”
“Yeah, they’re da bomb.”
“Kate?”
“Yes, Alex?”
“You’re da bomb.”
“[Bashful guffaw]”

They aren’t shown writing letters at this point, instead they are doing lonely people exercises and talking out loud to the other who is not in the room, nor in the hour, nor in the year.

According to the film’s own logic, they are now connecting through time and space in an instant, line by line as they speak, like time travel instant messaging. (What?) Theoretically, Kate is driving to the lake house mailbox to retrieve each sentence, but it’s portrayed as if they are in the same room. The film starts to fold in on itself like pastry dough.

Some unsurprising things about this film:
-Kate’s minuscule, nondescript silver earrings. A perfect representation of the film’s lack in characterization.
-This is more or less the director’s first mainstream American film. (Could it be Alejandro Agresti’s last? Is the world that kind?)
-Both characters have been burned by love before.
-Kate’s present self gets stood up by Alex’s future self.
-Someone’s future death is prevented. Yawn!
-At no point do either of the main characters express wonder, awe, or general freaked-out-ness. It is unsurprising becase they are unexcitable people.

Our fascination with time travel seems to generally represent itself in film under the motives of fate or science or love or happenstance. The motive here is love but whose motive is it? Does the lake house give a shit? Does the mailbox? Is it God? If it is, he goes unmentioned, along with game day results, significant world events, and lottery numbers. Along with butterfly effect theories, talk of science or any discussion Grandma Death would approve of. The saddest thing about the film is the premise itself, so completely harmless. A house on the lake, a magical mailbox, the power of time travel, all of these things working together to unite two of the most boring people who ever lived across the staggering distance of the year 2004 to the year… 2006. A fraction of a fraction of a blink in the history of the universe. The maximum span between car registrations in most states. The time it takes to earn an Associate’s Degree in Office Management. Shorter than the shelf life of a can of beets. It’s embarrassing.

My grandmother did not like it. It did not win my grandmother, who has been previously wooed by Edible Arrangements and Precious Moments figurines.

So I wonder, who did it win?



Bebe Ballroom would like to own a time travel mailbox machine. She tumbls here.

Keanu Reeves Week: Bill &Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Keanu Reeves Week: Parenthood (1989)

LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHILE YOU’RE BUSY MAKING OTHER PLANS.

by Brianna Ashby

I sat on the toilet for at least ten minutes, crossing and uncrossing my eyes, trying to make sure that the faint pink line that had appeared in the window wasn’t a figment of my imagination, or an optical illusion, or some strange shard of refracted pinkness that was magically hovering just over that particular spot. I put the stick on the edge of the tub and watched as the line grew darker and more definite and my heartbeat grew louder and more deafening and I think I said something like, Holy Shit. I left the urine soaked harbinger of change where it lay and walked into the kitchen on legs that felt like petrified wood, and even though the look on my face very clearly said it all, I had to force the words out so I could begin to believe them. After a few minutes of Are you sure? I’m sure. How sure? Four tests sure. Holy Shit, the shock began to soften. We walked the fifteen paces from the stove to the couch hand in hand, and sat, our fingers intertwined and resting atop my unsuspecting belly, the air around us imperceptibly vibrating like a cloud of hummingbirds.

We’re having a baby.

By nature I am a worrier, a perfectionist, and a hypothetical soothsayer; a mild neurotic who thinks she can ordain anything that could possibly happen at any time in the future. (I also find planning ahead tremendously advantageous, which coupled with the aforementioned traits, makes me a real tour de force among obsessives.) So, naturally, the second I saw the fuzzy pink apparition of a line start to appear on my fourth home pregnancy test, my mind took off in all directions. Having children lends itself quite freely to lying awake at night sick over the pitiful state of the world, the oppressive cost of higher education, and whether or not the paint in your window sashes has been tested for lead, but these superficial worries are nothing compared to the deep intestine wringing fantods that only come with one late night thought. 

Am I a good parent?

Shouldering the responsibility of growing and raising a well-adjusted child with all ten fingers and ten toes is staggering, and even the smallest hiccup in the process can feel like the most epic failure. Parents tend to take everything personally, from the mundane to the earth shattering. A toddler’s distaste for spinach or a teenager’s rebellion, those things are the stuff of sitcoms and laundry detergent commercials, and yet, they still resonate as failures, no matter how hilariously insignificant. Any imperfections in our children magnify our own, and so it becomes that in the pursuit of the best life for our kids, we set lofty goals and hold the unrealistic expectation that the universe has not only signed off on our plans, that it’s going to help us along. If you’ve had any dealings with the universe, you’d know that this is not the case. 

Watching the trials and tribulations of the Buckman family unfold on film is an exercise in humility for those of us trying to raise our kids so that they don’t become serial killers, but it’s not so child-centric that it becomes irrelevant to everyone else. We all have people in our lives whose function or dysfunction have helped mold us into the humans that we are, and whose both obvious, and poorly disguised, neuroses become fodder for ribald holiday jesting and sessions with our therapists. The Buckman children are all products of their upbringing, the sons and daughters of a hard-drinking abrasive father (Jason Robards) and a quiet mostly subservient mother (Eileen Ryan).

Gil (Steve Martin) is an obsessive perfectionist so hell bent on not repeating the same mistakes his father made with him that he would go to nearly any lengths to be seen as a hero to his children, to the detriment of his own personal and career aspirations. Helen (Dianne Wiest) is an embittered divorcée whose well of distrust toward men runs deep, and whose clear unhappiness and resentment has driven her son into virtual silence and her daughter to blatant rebellion. Susan (Harley Kozak) was something of a free wheeling wild child until she settled down with Nathan, whose fastidiousness and controlling nature seemed like the answer to her aimlessness. Once she felt grounded, and now she just feels stifled. Larry (Tom Hulce) is your run-of-the-mill no-goodnik; the long haired, leather-clad baby of the family, Larry shows up after a ten year absence with a chip on his shoulder, a serious gambling problem and an illegitimate son. The one thing that they all have in common is that they want to do right by their parents, and do right as parents, both of which are a struggle, but mostly against themselves. 

When Gil and his wife Karen are faced with the reality that their eldest son is struggling with emotional problems that will effectually bar him from public, “normal,” school, their immediate reaction is complete denial. People tend to react poorly to bad news, and people who depend on a tenuous façade of perfection to hold it together naturally pretend that whatever they’ve just heard is somehow a terrible mistake. It is infinitely easier to live in a fantasy world than admit that your reality is flawed, so we shift the blame (for lack of a better term) to avoid shouldering any responsibility for what went wrong.

Meanwhile, as Gil is over-zealously coaching little league and throwing the full weight of his desperation into positive affirmations, Susan is watching with increasing dismay while Nathan (Rick Moranis) drills their adorable chubby-cheeked three-year-old daughter with flashcards to prepare her for the SATs. Nathan’s rather terrifying hyper-involved parenting has made their child into a tiny robot who has no idea why a child her age would twirl around and around in circles until they fell down, and his unrelenting pursuit of a tangential Nobel Prize win has left Susan out in the cold. Still, their children don’t have problems. They don’t have problems. Other people have problems. Helen has problems.

From the outside, it would appear that Helen, still reeling from the split with her husband, has her hands full with two unruly and undisciplined children that couldn’t give two shits about anything that their mother has to say. The other Buckmans take pity Helen and her kids, seeing them as casualties of our ruthless modern times, but secretly, I’m sure they’re all relieved that this textbook case of familial dysfunction diverts attention from their own equally dubious issues.

Garry (Joaquin Phoenix, known as “Leaf Phoenix” in 1989) is frightfully introverted, sullen, secretive, and unresponsive, having retreated inward since his father’s unceremonious abandonment, and Julie (Martha Plimpton) is torturing her mother with standard teenage fare: yelling, slamming doors, acting out, and dating boys that Helen doesn’t approve of, especially “that Tod” (Keanu Reeves). To spite her mother, Julie runs off with Tod, proclaiming that they’re in love! she needs him!, and all of the motherly reproaches in the world couldn’t tear them apart. Tod is a breath of fresh air in what becomes a pretty depressing domestic clusterfuck. Although he’s not terribly bright, Tod is charming, adorable, and wholly uncomplicated. Until he and Julie end up husband and wife, that is.

Bruised, but not crippled, by the news that her baby girl has married “that Tod,” Helen digs in her heels and allows the newlyweds to live under her roof, and slowly allows Tod into her life. Goofy, approachable, and most importantly, male, Tod is the only person able to penetrate Garry’s defenses, having come from a place where he learned early on that “they’ll let any asshole be a father.” Seeing Tod’s ease in dealing with her children, and the ease with which he found himself a place in her family, Helen stops trying so hard to force herself into Gary and Julie’s lives, and realizes that sometimes, just being there is enough.

It’s easy to get sucked into a sort of vortex after a traumatic event, or an extended run of feeling impotent, or stagnant, or unappreciated, or what have you, and it’s safe to say that the Buckmans are all swirling around right in the middle of it, totally unable to see a way out. Tod’s introduction into the whole mess provides some desperately needed objectivity, and a shot of hope that catalyzes a series of crucial changes in Helen, and Gary and Julie, and more indirectly, in the rest of the Buckman siblings, who finally begin to own up to their shortcomings as parents, and as people just trying to get along.

Realizing they all have to help themselves before they can truly help their children, Helen and Gil and Susan and the rest start facing their fears head on, each small act of emotional bravery helping to pull them out of the mess they were wallowing in. Admittedly, a shotgun wedding between two clueless teenagers is far from ideal, but it serves as a strong example that sometimes imperfect and perfect are one in the same. 

What Tod has going for him more than anything else is his simplicity, which is not to be confused with stupidity. He’s young, and brash, and doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows that he loves Julie, and he has the ability to filter out the minutia and focus on what is really important that comes with unfettered youth. As adults, we’re burdened with the supplementary fear of repeating the past, as well as the fear of the future, and both can be paralyzing. When we’re young, our frame of reference is smaller, and the future is more exciting than daunting, so we’re far more willing to dive into our lives without the hindrance of preconception. We get lost in all of the analysis and over-analysis and introspection and worry, and we have so much wrapped up in the idea of leading a “successful” life, that we tend to miss the fact that sometimes things are what they are and that’s exactly what they need to be. 

Parents, as a rule, want to give their kids whatever they want, to give them the gifts and wisdom that will allow them to lead peerlessly wonderful lives, and often we end up burdening them (and ourselves) with our good intentions. We try to guide our children down the “right” path instead of letting them be what they’re going to be, especially if they’re going to turn out anything like us. Everyone has their own set of insecurities, and somehow, even the idea of becoming a mother or a father tends to exacerbate them a million fold, and this self-loathing (mild or otherwise) blinds us to the fact that all we can do is our best, and that our best is good enough. We have to be good to ourselves before we can be good to anyone else, and that means giving ourselves a break. Everyone deserves to be happy, even us, as adults, and as parents, and part of that comes from letting go of our fear of failure and accepting that life is a rollercoaster, not a merry-go-round, as grandma would say. Our children will find happiness in their own time and on their own terms and all we can do is give them a lantern, or a Tod, to help light the way. The path is up to them. 

Brianna Ashby is the surprisingly well-rested mother of an 18 month old who, since her daughter’s birth, has finally learned to stop worrying and love the bedlam.

Keanu Reeves Week: River’s Edge (1986)