Finding a Kindred Spirit in the Deep Depths of Despair

The poignant and fortuitous bond between strangers: ‘Lake George’

The older you get, the harder it becomes to find a real connection. One that taps into your core — so sharply and unexpectedly — your core taps back. I'm talking about the good stuff: a visceral feeling that echoes through your body, indicating, "Hey, this person standing before you has something to offer specifically for the inner thoughts and deep sentiments that make up your entire being.” Above a certain age, that’s a sensation so rare you think it’s accidental, a glitch of life, baiting you with a false hope that will inevitably wither and end in disappointment. You know yourself better than to believe something so arbitrary — it must be a coincidence.

But then it happens again. And you’re fully aware it goes against what you know, what life has taught you so far, which is that 99 percent of the strangers you meet will have no significant impact on you whatsoever. They’re dummy rounds of people that bounce off your skin with no chance of piercing through you. So when one of them somehow does, you won’t feel that you’ve been shot — you’ll just notice you’re bleeding.

That moment in writer-director Jeffrey Reiner’s 2024 neo-noir Lake George first arrives when Don (Shea Whigham demonstrating why he’s one of the best character actors of his generation), an ex-convict, offers to split half the gold he just stole with the woman he was supposed to kill. Phyllis (Carrie Coon on her way to becoming her generation’s best) doesn’t believe it. “Why?” she asks. “That’s not what people do.” Don replies, “Well, I’m not those people.”

Phyllis’s bafflement is understandable. She’s the ex-girlfriend-who-knows-too-much of a merciless Armenian mafioso, who Don was hired to murder to get what he’s owed but couldn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he let himself be persuaded to team up with this stranger to get back at the mobster who wants both of them dead by stealing his secret stashes scattered around Southern California. If there’s an opposite of “meet-cute,” this is it.

Don and Phyllis are two lost souls heading to nowhere, where nothing and nobody awaits them. It’s a bleak road trip paved with existential anguish, dead bodies, and deep-seated regrets, which eventually force them to admit they have nothing to live for. It’s a heavy reckoning. Don spent ten years in federal prison for a stupid mistake that caused his wife and kids to turn away from him. He’s practically dead to them and has no illusions about it. He knows fucking up people’s lives has a price. And he’s paying it. Phyllis, on the other hand, acts like she’s got a plan, concealing a daunting truth under her hard-shell persona, but apart from the meaningless possessions that belong to her ex, her life is just as empty as Don’s.

Family of any kind, or someone to care for, isn’t part of their reality. So, as much as they object to this absurd touch-and-go situation, they don't actually mind the company. But, realistically, none of them believes in a shared future, let alone a happy one. It’s a nice fantasy that soothes their minds, letting them wander to a dreamy place where the sky is ocean-blue over a lovely lake that breathes an alluring ambiance in their faces while holding hands and taking in its beauty. Maybe in another lifetime… where they won't have to kill, steal, and lie to see another day in a world that doesn’t want them.

Second chances (if they truly exist) are sometimes given to those who have no use for them. If you've ruined your life, alienated every person, and destroyed every relationship that mattered to you, what good is it to escape death and survive another day? What’s the point of getting another chance to appreciate what you have if you have nothing — nothing that matters, anyway?

Lake George, as tragicomic as it is, elegantly poses an alternative tucked underneath its sunshine-noir plot. What if you met a stranger, and despite your internal instincts and mental alarm system, you decided to let your guard down and share those self-haunting thoughts with them that keep you up at night? The very thoughts that are so heavy and harrowing, you couldn’t even share them with the people closest to you. In a way, it's inevitable: profound pain breeds vulnerability, vulnerability breeds exposure, and exposure leads to opening up. Basic human nature. Even when you know this random person could take advantage of your moment of weakness any way they want. Yet they don’t. They just get you. Isn’t that the type of nexus — a selfless acceptance — that we all long for every morning when we open our eyes?

Gracefully, Reiner lets this sentiment linger throughout the movie without ever fully committing to it. It’s a conscious effort on his part. In an interview for Far Out, the director said, “As we progressed, I just sensed that there was this burgeoning love between the two characters and people who don’t have love in their lives who need it desperately.” That subtle tenderness is what differentiates his feature from being another Coen-esque farce that revels in the type of criminal shenanigans that are usually more comical than profound. Instead, Lake George never loses sight of how tragic and broken its protagonists are (infused with a painfully relatable loneliness), heading towards a fate that’s virtually predestined.

All that soul-decaying remorse — shared between Doc and Phyllis — poignantly culminates in the final moments designed to quietly break our hearts. It's a gentle tragedy, if you will, highlighting an exquisite, affectionate, and unexpected bond between two strangers who should never have connected under the sinister circumstances they met. But because they did, they’ve probably found the last person on Earth who could give them peace. Is there a greater gift to those who end up in the deep depths of despair with nothing?

---