Liebestraum

Some of the comments here on this movie seem to point in the direction that people simply don't seem to be able to grasp the subtle implications of this movie. The movie consists of two intertwined stories, one in the past and one in the present, and until the very end, the story of the present is a direct repetition of the story of the past, only in a different setting. And some of the people from the story of the past are still alive and present in the story of the present.

Most importantly, Bill Pullmans character, Paul Kessler, plays the repetition-role of the angry husband, who one generation ago killed his wife and her lover. Only Paul Kessler doesn't (yet) have an adulterous wife to kill, so his hate and anger is pointed at the building, in which the past act of hatred took place. Paul Kessler is the engine that drives the repetition-pattern in the present of past events, and the two main characters, Nick Kaminsky and Pauls wife Jane, can't help but to play their part in repeating history.

The love- and the hate-stories of the past and the present and their repetitive nature are the drives and motivators of this movie, and everything else evolves and is motivated from this pattern.

The movie really isn't that subtle, it simply can't be explained by mere deductive logic. It's a love- and hate- and crime- and almost a ghoststory and if you absolutely have to have an explanation for everything in this movie, the explanation would have to be found in the explanation of the present through the past and in the illogical event of the almost complete repetition of the past in the present.