It is Valentine's Day 2008, and Kate Forster has just discovered that the man she could not save at Daley Plaza was Alex Wyler. Meanwhile, it is also Valentine's Day 2006, and Kate Forster plans to have lunch with her mother at Daley Plaza, and Alex Wyler has remembered her mention of the accident there. He in 2006 is rushing to the lake house to check her old letters to confirm time and place so he can find her. She in 2008 is rushing to the lake house to send him the letter that will warn him away from his fatal accident.
We already considered the problem that he has to be there for some other reason in the original history, even though the only reason we know for him to be there is that he got her letter. Now she is undoing that. Yet his death was the triggering event for the magic; if he does not die at Daley Plaza he never gets the any of the letters and none of this happens; if none of it happens he dies at Daley Plaza and gets the letters. It is an infinity loop; time is destroyed.
Yet that is only one of the complications.
If he was not killed at Daley Plaza, why did he not call her on July 10th, 2006, at 9:05 PM, as she suggested? Her phone rang and it was Morgan, but even cheap cell phones alert the user to a second incoming call. Yet if he called, that derails the rest of the letters, and again we are thrown into a major anomaly.
The same problem presents itself more boldly when he does not show at the restaurant. If he was not killed at Daley Plaza, why would he not be there? If he is there, the story ends, they have met, and she never sends the last letter to save his life.
So the big problems are that if he lives the entire story becomes impossible, in multiple ways.
There is also a little problem that has to do with the magic of the mailbox. When Kate put a letter in the mailbox shortly before Valentine's Day 2006, she raised the flag. The magic suggests that the flag would stay raised until Alex removed the letter shortly after Valentine's Day 2004, but that the letter was in both locations starting the moment he is killed at Daley Plaza on Valentine's Day. When in 2006 Kate puts a letter in the mailbox, it is Valentine's Day, and the magic has not yet started. That letter will cause the flag to rise as it arrives in 2006--but the flag is already up in 2006, because her letter to him is there waiting for the next resident. So when he arrives the flag is up because her departing letter is in it which he received in 2004, and when he is leaving it is still up. It is not logical that he would check the mailbox as he is leaving. Either he saw the flag upon arrival and checked it then (when the letter was not yet there, since if it were he would not have checked the letters in the box) or he ignored the flag in his haste to reach Kate. If he checked upon arrival, he saw the old letter and would not check again upon departure. If he did not check upon arrival it would be because he did not think it important, and he would not be likely to think it more important upon departure. The flag does not tell him there is a new letter, because it is already up for the old one.
That, though, is of small consequence--just one of those annoying details that seems to have been overlooked in trying to weave a good story with a time travel element. The big disaster is that the entire story depends on Alex dying in that accident, and when Kate prevents that, she undoes it all, the story unravels, and we are left with seven impossible things before breakfast, any one of which should make the movie indigestible.
It is a pleasant love story, but a terrible time travel tale.
Comments
Cards on the table: I haven't seen this movie (not normally a fan of romcoms, though with the time travel aspect I may check it out and pretend I got it for my wife), so I'm just basing this on your description.
Most of the problems you cite are indeed fatal, but it strikes me that there may be one exception. I refer to the non-phone call and no-show at the restaurant. Is it possible that we are seeing not the last, but the next-to-last time line - ie, the one before she smashes all time into an infinity loop?
Thanks for the comment, Gazza; I really had to think about it for a bit.
O.K., it's 2006. Over a year ago Alex got that "last" letter from Kate, ending the correspondence and mentioning the Daley Plaza event. He leaves that letter at the Lake House, with the others, and when he realizes on Valentines Day that this is the day she is lunching at Daley Plaza he rushes to the Lake House and finds the missing letter. It will be two years before she sends the letter telling him not to come, so he does not receive it. He rushes to Daley Plaza, where he is hit by the bus and dies in her arms.
That certainly starts the magic and sets up the history in which he fails to call and fails to appear at the restaurant because he is already dead, and that could be the timeline we are viewing. I certainly am not arguing that those events could never have happened in some timeline--they certainly did.
What goes wrong, though, is that on Valentines Day 2008 Kate rushes to the Lake House to send the warning letter, and the moment it makes the trip from her to him in 2006, it ends that timeline and replaces everything with a new altered history.
In that history, that final history of the world, Alex is not killed at Daley Plaza, and of course since he is not killed there is no moment when Kate makes the connection which starts the magic, and there is also no letter warning him. But it is in this timeline that we have the added problems that he might make the phone call and he certainly would appear at the restaurant--and either of those events mean that the correspondence ends, she never sends the letter that mentions the Daley Plaza incident, he does not travel to the Lake House to re-read that letter or rush to Daley Plaza to be killed, and she does not send the warning letter.
That means there is no history of the world that can lead to the moment she is waiting by the mailbox for him to drive up to meet her in 2008. The only history that brings her to that mailbox is the one in which he dies, and that history ends when her warning is sent to him in the past, replaced by the history in which he does not die but instead meets her at the restaurant.
So yes, there would be a history in which he stood her up in the restaurant, which is not the final history of the world; but the fact that in the final history of the world he is alive to meet her at the restaurant means she will meet him there and will never send the letter that keeps him alive.
Does that make sense?
--M. J. Young
I just watched the movie and found your thoughts very interesting. I hope this response is still somewhat relevant.
In her last letter she tells him to just be patient and wait the two years to meet her at the lake house. So if he strictly follows her advice, knowing that death looms upon him, he might not call and also not show up at the restaurant.
So that "only" leaves the fact that she clearly says that the accident inspired her to go to the lake house. But then she might have gone there for another reason eventually (maybe seeing someone at the hospital die and having the same thoughts).
Thanks for the comment, Solver; comments are always welcome, and answered as soon as I am aware and able. If you're a fan of time travel movies generally, I hope you'll read more--there's a good index of the articles both here and at the original site at http://www.mjyoung.net/time/examiner.html to help you find what you know.
It might be interesting to pursue the question of what their relationship would be like had he known in 2006 to avoid meeting her until 2008 and so done so. Since he had already written the previous letters he would not be able to let her know why he was not there. You have the advantage that I have not seen the film for a few years now, but my recollection of the final letter does not include her telling him to wait the full two years; it would take marvelous deduction on his part to realize that he should not meet her before 2008.
It still does not resolve the main issue: if he does not die at Daley Plaza in 2006, the magic never starts, and even if it did it would so change events that she would never warn him of an accident which never happened. So we wind up in that infinity loop either way, even if we can negotiate the problem of him not meeting her sooner.
Thanks again for your comment.
--M. J. Young
Good point! I didn't think of the fact that she wouldn't warn him then and cause a loop anyhow.
Yes, that is ultimately the big problem: if Alex is not killed at Daley Plaza, Kate won't warn him against coming to Daley Plaza; and if she does not warn him, he will come there and be killed, so we have that infinity loop. The phone call and the restaurant are secondary problems within the larger one.
Thanks again for your comments.
--M. J. Young
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