From Omeleto.
Two teenagers visit their memories.
THE LAKE IN THE SKY is used with permission from Caleb Reese Paul. Learn more at https://thelakeinthesky.com.
Warren is an isolated teenager who spends most of his time at a cabin in the woods. But he has access to a remarkable machine he calls "Nostalgia." With it, he can revisit memories, putting himself back in that time and space as if he were there. Using the machine, he revisits memories of his late father.
One day he meets Sarah, another teenager who recently lost her friend. He shows Sarah the machine, allowing her to revisit her late friend, who died in an accident. But when the machine goes wrong, the pair realize the limits of nostalgia.
Directed and written by Caleb Reese Paul, who also plays Warren, this thoughtful, intriguing short drama explores the intersection between memories and emotional growth. The journeys of Warren and Sarah pose questions about the fine line between being stuck in the past and holding it dear, as the two teens learn to balance the allure of the past while facing the tenuousness of a future that moves forward without their loved ones by their side.
Ambitious in its writing and thematic reach, the storytelling has a textured, almost impressionistic register, layering dreamlike images of the past and the imagination, Warren’s thoughts about time and experience and a pensive, evocative musical score. It opens with a montage of reverie and reflection that sets up the thematic terrain of the narrative before setting up the main storyline, as Warren and Sarah meet at the lake in an almost fairytale-like way, by simply arriving at one another. As played by actors Paul and Maxine Wanderer, Warren and Sarah are stunted in their present from their grief for their lost loved ones; Warren is locked away in his own sphere and Sarah is rawer and angrier about her more recent loss.
Their storyline develops and the machine is introduced, an almost Spielbergian streak seeps into the film, epitomized by the machine, which has an improvised, handmade feel but a palpable magic. The film takes time to set up its themes and moods, but it picks up momentum when Sarah uses the machine to revisit her last memory with her late friend. She can’t help but break the rules that govern the machine, which begins to malfunction in the reality that they’ve left. Warren and Sarah have to untangle themselves from the past, but as they try to piece together what’s happening, the nostalgia machine goes haywire, putting them in peril.
THE LAKE IN THE SKY ends on a subtle cliffhanger, but more importantly, it asks one final question, revealing the film to be a meditation on identity, memory and being shaped by the past. There’s a hermetic quality to the narrative’s sense of place, capturing the sense of being dreamily disconnected from a larger world, and perhaps from unruly, ungovernable life itself. Yet we can see the temptation in retreating from life and taking refuge in the past — though as Warren and Sarah eventually learn, there’s a danger in losing ourselves entirely in it.
