The story in a sentence: A young man falls head over heels for a non-committal girl, and desperately tries to get over her after their break up.
Hollywood has a structure for how romantic comedies are supposed to unfold. Usually it involves either Jennifer Aniston or Matthew McConaughey (sometimes both!).
(500) Days of Summer is not one of those films. Not by a long shot.
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) always grew up believing in the romanticized idea of love. That someday, he would fall madly in love with a girl and that they would live happily ever after together. Until the point that he finds said girl, his life is empty and meaningless.
While working at a greeting card company, Tom meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and upon first glance he knows that she is “The One”.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
The film is broken up into separate parts of their relationship, which lasts exactly 500 days (suddenly, the title makes so much sense!). The days are shown out of order, sometimes ranging from day 478 to day 1 and vice versa. While the idea sounds jarring and confusing, the film actually flows quite well, as long as you can do basic math to know which day is further back in time. Director Marc Webb said that this was done intentionally, because when remembering a relationship, you hardly ever do so in chronological order, but in tiny bits broken up and scattered about. In this way the film is almost like a glimpse into Tom’s mind, however, it never quite feels that way.
Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt work especially well together, delivering more than convincing performances and showing excellent onscreen chemistry. Together, they really create a fly-on-the-wall view of the modern day relationship, with all its hilarious pitfalls. However, don’t confuse the comedy in this film to that of the average Hollywood genre flick. (500) Days of Summer laughs more at the hilarity of situations and conversations than “Hey, let’s knock Matthew McConaughey off the side of a boat!” (Okay, I admit I do have a small hatred for “Failure to Launch”). This is all exaggerated by great performances from Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler, who play Tom’s best friends.
At this point, I’m sure you’re thinking “God, Spike, I thought you said this film was different than the average romantic comedy. Sure seems cookie cutter enough to me.” Touche, random audience member. Let me now present to you the average romantic comedy…
HOW HOLLYWEIRD DOES GENRE’S:
Step 1: Boy meets girl.
Step 2: Boy dates girl.
Step 3: Girl breaks up with boy after he does something stupid.
Step 4: Boy fights to get girl back.
Step 5: They live happily ever after.
Step 6: Sex.
Now, look at how the structure of (500) Days goes…
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
Step 1: Tom meets Summer.
Step 2: Tom dates Summer.
Step 3: Summer breaks up with Tom because she doesn’t love him.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we in the industry like to call originality. It’s hardly used these days and let’s face it, this has happened before in films. The fact is that we’ve become so accustomed to the average laugh-a-minute movies that when a film comes along and doesn’t deliver that, it totally floors us. Such is the way with (500) Days of Summer.
In addition to excellent characters, Webb directs a stunning visual masterpiece that I can honestly say showed me things I have never seen done with a film before. Not that this is an art piece by any means, but this film truly used artistic means to further the film.
Case in point: the split-screen scene. By no means is the use of split-screen groundbreaking, but Webb uses it as a window into the character’s mind. During the scene, Tom is going to a party Summer is throwing post break-up. He hopes that it goes one way, but it instead turns out differently. In what I can only describe as cinematic genius, Webb is able to show us both – at the same time.
The jury still seems to be out on this film as a whole. I show this to my friends all the time and they either seem to love it’s original quirkiness or they can’t find a way to jive with the film’s main protagonists. I thoroughly encourage you to watch it and see for yourself.
If you’re anything like me, it’ll knock you off you’re feet.
I give this film 5 unexpected break-ups out of 5.
13 Comments
I dunno, thought it coulda used a castration or two.
YUK, YUK, YUK!!!
No, I’m fascinated with your fascination with this movie. BECAUSE I LIKE YOU, I wanna watch this thing again and give it another shot.
I think I am one of those people who, as you say, “can’t jive with the film’s protagonists.” I like Joseph Gordon Levitt in general though (and I really just keep waiting for Zooey Deschanel to spray whipped cream on her breasts and sing “California Girls,” is that wrong? Maybe that’s the problem…)
Actually, you know, she really is the one who bugs me, and it’s not really any fault of her performance, it’s just the construct of that character in general. She’s too cool, she’s like mocha frappuccino cool, with ICE, cool. And it’s weirdly aggravating to me that someone so impenetrable could rip this guy apart.
Now maybe that’s part of the point. And I guess, as you say, it isn’t really a romance, and maybe that’s the other part of the point.
So, if not a romance, what is it then? I like the idea that its just bits and fragments of memory strung along a time-line, distorted by the passage of time and such.
And that could also explain something, like maybe somehow through the haze of memory he’s devalued her character a bit; iced her over, animatrized her (Kety Perry-ized her).
Still, by bumping into (SPOILER!) a girl named “Autumn” at the end of all this, it seems to me that he somehow hasn’t learned his lesson.
But, again, maybe that’s part of the point. Maybe that’s the whole point, in fact; this isn’t really a “lesson” movie, it’s just about people.
AND I HAVE NO HEART is the other problem
“California girls, they’ll make your eyes bleed, daisy dukes bikinis on top…”
Mike,
The movie very clearly states in the beginning that it is not a love story. It is a story about love. I believe that we as audiences are so predisposed (because of the Hollywood structure) to think that every “romance” film has to have a happy ending where couples engage in Steps 5 and 6 of my outline. Life doesn’t work that way and either you accept that in this film or you don’t. You are not the only person I’ve told to see this film come back and tell me they didn’t like it.
I also don’t see him bumping into Autumn at the end of the film as him not learning his lesson. In the beginning of the film, he believes in romantic love/destiny/fate. His relationship with Summer shakes that belief and in the 2nd act he talks about how love is phony and doesn’t exist. But when he meets Summer at the park, she tells him about how he got her to believe in love, which is why she was able to find her husband.
As the Narrator so eloquently summed it up: “If Tom had learned anything… it was that you can’t ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that’s all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence… Tom had finally learned, there are no miracles. There’s no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now. He was… (Tom rushes back to talk to Autumn) He was pretty sure.”
This movie is not about a relationship where people fall in love. It’s about the relationship people have before they fall in love.
P.S. I LIKE YOU TOO!
*blushes and ducks into geometry class*
Just TRY hiding in Geometry class! Our love can’t be deflected by a bunch of silly shapes, you know this!
Anyway, all mathematical bromancing aside…I see your point, and raise you one!
And that point is I should probably see it again.
I might just agree with you, but I also wanna re-evaluate my gripe with it: something needles me when I watch this, and I’m not sure what it is.
I’ll tell you what it’s NOT: all the singing and dancing. Me gusta!
Can’t lie, I liked this movie. And no Leonberger, it isn’t wrong that you want Zooey to put whipped cream on her body and sing. In fact, I’d be willing to halfsies with you to pay her to do this. Even if it cost…well, a lot of money.
Haha, you’re on Sean!
500 days of perverted whipped-cream singing, yelch!
Is it weird that I think Katy Perry is hotter than Zooey Deschanel? I know that they look exactly the same but something about Katy Perry naked on a cotton candy cloud (perfectly airbrushed of course) just turns me on more than a stand off-ish Deschanel. I mean she’s kind of a bitch in every movie that she’s in.
that makes her more of a challenge, spikey poo! i will break down her impenetrable wall…a wall whose brick is made of pain and whose mortar is made with tears. i will crumble it with edgy sarcasm, biting wit, and a little thing i like to call the Oreo Special, which only black+white people know about.
Your missing the big picture here, Sean. What kind of magical power does Katy Perry possess that allows her to form a cloud capable of holding the body weight on roughly half a person? Can we obtain such power with proper training and then sell it off in a giant commercial scheme? We’d make millions, which we’d then use to remake “Battleship” for half of its current cost.
The good ‘ol double stuff, eh?
JOINX! That’s fucked up.
Anyway, I dunno about Katy Perry…she’s hot and she’s cold, she’s in and she’s out, she’s up and she’s down, she’s black and she’s white…JOINX!
I hate this comment.
To facilitate my (admittedly) filthy point:
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/blog/images/oreo.jpg
HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THAT!
I have no words for what my eyes have just witnessed.
that is sexy
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