Has anyone else watched the original Korean movie, il Mare? (yes, like the fancy restaurant in The Lake House, how clever)
When I watched The Lake House years ago I sought out Il Mare hoping that they would end it differently, and actually let Keanu stay dead. I remembered that it ended differently so I just re-watched it to remember. The film is worse, it dwells on loneliness, but at least they don't have conversations with each other, they clearly write long form letters, and no one plants a magic tree. It also has a slightly more logical ending, that is slightly less time loopy.
Spoiler ahead.
He writes her a good bye letter, which sounds like a suicide note, and then releases the fish she sent him that he'd been keeping in his bathtub. So she goes to find him at his architecture school and is told he had died in a car accident. She remembers the accident which she had witnessed while breaking up with a boyfriend, and writes him a letter telling him not to come and rushes it to the mailbox. Of course he goes there. He gets hit by a car and bleeds out in the middle of the street and she cries at the mail box. But then it all rewinds, literally blood going back into his head, and he goes and talks to her while sheβs moving out of the Lake House and leaving the very first letter in the box and asks if she wants to hear a magical tale.
So essentially Paul and Jason were right. He should have just gone and found her and presented his creepy evidence of the relationship she doesn't know about yet.
If anyone cares to see it you can find it on Youtube with English subtitles.