One of the most difficult events to resolve in the film The Lake House concerns the appearance of a tree.
In one of their otherwise unchallenging letters (unchallenging in the sense that they communicate nothing that will so drastically change history as to be noticed) Kate mentions that she misses the trees at the lake house. It happens, though, that Alex was that day planting those trees, a reminder that they are so compatible that he selected trees to plant that she would love when she got there. The trees are in the back of his pickup truck, and he proceeds to plant them, but for one. This one he takes with him into Chicago, to the address where her apartments are currently being constructed, and taking advantage of a hole in the sidewalk (the plan called for trees which were never planted) he plants his tree late in the evening just to the side of where the front door will be.
Arguably once he has planted it there, it is there, and it has been there since before she took the apartment; but if it were, she would have seen it and would not have commented about missing the other trees nor notice that this one suddenly appeared. However, we see the tree appear. It is at night, pouring rain, and Kate is rushing toward the door. She stops for a moment, and the lightning flashes, and she is under the tree Alex planted two years before that has not been there in all that time.
At this point, it is reminiscent of several of the events in Frequency--the burned table, the broken radio, the destroyed hand, all events that when they happened in the past they suddenly had results in the future. We might cite Butterfly Effect as similarly handling time, as Evan Treborn seems to jump from one version of history to another, completely unaware of the events of the new history with full memories of the one now erased. Those movies, though, are temporal disasters, stories that do not work coherently under any theory of time. The question is whether there is any way that the events of The Lake House can be reconciled to a theory of time--and there might be a way.
We have to this point been assuming that the magic is in the mailbox; but we already recognized first that the magic was introduced by invocation at Daley Plaza and that it also includes the appearance of the dog. It might be that the magic is not that the mailbox carries messages between Kate and Alex, but that whenever either of them intends to send something to the other, it reaches the other when the other is in a position to receive it two years away. If this is correct, the tree is not in front of the apartment because Alex planted it there two years ago, but because when he planted it there two years ago he was sending it to Kate in the future, and when she arrived at that place two years later, it left the past and arrived for her to receive it.
This might also explain the grafitti considered last time, provided we put it somewhere after the walking tour. It could appear in a place she would have seen many times, two years after he wrote it.
The problem in connection with the tree, though, is that it has not leapt across two years of time. It has grown for two years, and spread into a good-sized city tree. It makes our magic much more complicated if the tree is to leap across two years of time into the future and age two years in the process. We feel that it either had to be growing somewhere, logically here, for two years, or it has to arrive the same size and age it was when it was planted. Certainly Alex' letters are not yellowed with age when Kate receives them; why should only the tree have aged?
It's the sort of complication that can't really be resolved. We can suggest that the filmmakers didn't think of that, and it really should have been the younger tree that Kate got; or we can argue that since Alex intended to give Kate an older tree when he sent a younger one it arrived older as part of the magic; or we can imagine that when he moved the one tree that had originally been planted at the lake house, two years later that move caught up with Kate and the older tree vanished from the lake house and appeared in the city. None of those are particularly appealing solutions, but in time travel movies sometimes mistakes are made, and this is a relatively small one.
Comments
How did you show the dog was magic? As for the tree growing...they all grew. How could the tree at her apartment not grow over two years? Your not speaking clearly. Maybe, he should have stuffed himself into the mailbox and arrived instantly.
I guess I was not clear.
The problem with the tree is that for two years it was nowhere. Alex did not plant it at the house, so it was not there; but it was not at the apartment until two years later. We can imagine that the tree moved like his letters, leaping over two years in an instant--but if so, why is it fully grown instead of freshly planted? If it grew, where was it while it was growing, if neither at the house nor at the apartment?
The dog was discussed in the earlier article, "The Bitch is Magic", which observed that it is purposefully bringing Alex and Kate to each other, appearing and disappearing at significant moments and seeming to know what to do to point them to each other. It's not quite an ordinary dog despite never doing anything extraordinary. It is part of the magic that brings them together, and thus in that sense "magical".
Thanks for the questions.
--M. J. Young
Are they being served?
Sorry, Doc, I don't understand the question.
--M. J. Young
are there other movies like that out?
Greetings, Chell. I suppose I should ask, like what? Here are some possibilities.
Romantic time travel stories include http://www.examiner.com/time-travelers-wife-1-in-national The Time Traveler's Wife; http://www.mjyoung.net/time/kate.html Kate and Leopold; the cult favorite http://www.mjyoung.net/time/somewher.html Somewhere in Time; and an excellent one, http://www.mjyoung.net/time/happy.html Happy Accidents, in which the time traveler saves the life of the beloved. Also with romantic themes, you might consider http://www.mjyoung.net/time/mill.html Millennium; http://www.mjyoung.net/time/peggy.html Peggy Sue Got Married; http://www.mjyoung.net/time/dejavu.html Deja Vu; and http://www.examiner.com/premonition-in-national Premonition. In a couple months I'll be doing an analysis of Next, which is not really time travel but has temporal elements in a romantic action story.
Time travel films in which people communicate across time are less common, although http://www.mjyoung.net/time/frequenc.html Frequency is the big one in this group.
There are many other time travel films out there; if you can be more specific about what it is you're seeking I might be able to give you better guidance on that.
Thanks for the question.
--M. J. Young
well, he plant the tree, so the tree age and grow big. the tree didn't went through the mail box, right? the letters in the mailbox go straight into future, no aging. simple and easy.
and i think the dog is just a normal dog. the dog just wander off from him, until she find the dog again 2 year later.
Thanks for the comments, Anonymous.
Problem: where was the tree while it grew? It was not at the apartment, because it appears there two years later; it was not at the house because Alex never planted it at the house. We have a tree that aged two years, but leapt across time not existing anywhere during those years. It is not so simple, I'm afraid.
For the dog, see http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-15701-Time-Travel-Movies-Examiner~y20... Lake House part 3: the bitch is magic. She is a strange dog whose presence and actions, although totally explicable in themselves, are clearly part of the magical events that draw the couple together.
Thanks again.
--M. J. Young
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