Last night, once the dust settled, I went into the bedroom and put Lake House in the DVD player. Honestly, I was tired of thinking about the temporal anomalies in Primer, and wanted to wrap my head around something else. Then, while the movie was getting started (I had seen the beginning already), I went back to my office and got involved in writing up Terranova Habitat for the space-themed Multiverser Triple Play worlds package. I did that for a while, and then went back, rewound the movie (which seems entirely the wrong word for a DVD) to a point that looked familiar, and watched the rest.

Lake House is going to be a lot easier than Primer; on the other hand, it’s not going to be reconcilable. The story collapses within the first ten minutes, but it’s watchable because you aren’t given the proof that those first ten minutes are impossible until the last ten minutes. It has a happy, if totally impossible, ending, and is an enjoyable film whether or not you like its stars. I’ve been a fan of stories about architecture since having been forced to read ninety percent of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead in high school, and some of the comments on architecture are insightful. There are a few spots where they get gimmicky, treating correspondence as if it were dialogue, which will have to be addressed; but in the main, it’s pretty clear what is supposed to have happened, and equally clear why none of it could have.

So I’ve accomplished something, but not nearly enough. Let me press on through today; maybe I can accomplish more.

–M. J. Young