Movie Review - The Lake House (with spoiler)

It's strange how the minute I tell people, "Go watch The Lake House!", the first thing they say to me is - "ghost story right?"

wtf?

Let the record show I don't watch ghost stories. I don't watch the trailers of ghost stories. I don't endorse ghost stories (paying good money to give yourself nights of sleepless insecurity - pppffbbt) and I definitely do not recommend ghost stories.

Now having said that, go watch The Lake House. It is as beautifully cathartic as a love story can get, with the perfect balance of fantasy and reality to make it as close to falling in love as you can possibly get.

If you don't know what I am talking about, then you obviously have never been in love. That sense of "is this really happening?" coupled with "Am I really that blessed?" with a hint of "What if I screw this up? Oh please God, don't let me screw this up!"

I am not going to give you a synopsis of the story because I think we all already know what it's about. And no, nothing about the movie is very un-formulaic, or mind blowing. It's a fairly simple boy meets girl, boy finds out girl is not attainable, boy fights all odds to attain girl story.

Except for the time difference. Of 2 years. And the painfully slow and torturous snail mail communication.

So this movie is actually about the wait. By the end of the movie, he would have waited 4 years for this woman. And 2 years with no contact at all.

Like I said, this movie is cathartic. It purges you of every frustration you ever felt waiting for someone, or even, waiting for someone to change. Sometimes with no communication from that person as to his feelings towards you. But you wait because you cannot imagine losing that part of your life by moving on.

Sandra Bullock moved on in the movie, not because she wanted to, but because she did the stupid thing. She decided to settle. Settle for what she could see, feel and tangibly hold. And she did it, like most of us do - without realising that what she couldn't see what far superior to what she could. She lost faith in faith, and it almost destroys her.

She was lucky she was the heroine of a movie, and the writers could fix her life for her, but most of us aren't that blessed. We muddle along the best we can, regretting the mistakes, but using distractions to forget about the self made mess. And keeping the faith in the other things that matter.