The film's opening makes it clear: This is not a love story. It is a story about love. Told in a non chronological fashion, we see 500 days in the relationship of Tom (Joseph GordonLevitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel). For those who have seen 10 Things I Hate About You, this is an evolution of that story told in a more realistic fashion. While Joseph Gordon-Levitt pretty much plays the same character, he adds gravitas to the ups and downs of relationships which all men go through at some point. Zooey Deschanel brings her playful carefree attitude to Summer, which the movie itself is quick to point out has a very strong effect over men. While most people expect this to be a love story, it's not. It's a carefully crafted story about relationships and the highs and lows we all experience and how we focus on the highs more than the lows. The quirky humor and the wittiness brought out in the film covers the very introspective dissection of a relationship. While the ending is somewhat expected, it serves as the movies last laugh. A must see for romantics, indie film appreciators and mainstream audiences alike, this movie is the guide to growing up all boys need to become men. Especially, once they see the Plate scene. Check it out!
Buy (500) Days of Summer (2009) Now
First off I must confess, I do not like Rom/coms, or Rom/Drams, I would much rather watch anything and I mean anything than these genres, I feel they are stupid, unbelievable, mostly appeal to the female audience who like the unrealistic happy endings and when the guy says sweet nothings in the girl's ear, gag me with a fork....BUT this movie is not your conventional Romantic Comedy, it's your unconventional, romantic comedy that actually keeps it real and tangible, sorry for all you "The Note Book" movie lovers out there who expect sweet, happy tearful endings.
Plot is simple, boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl dumps boy; Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is a Greeting card writer whose hidden talent is architecture, meets secretary Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and we go through his trials and tribulations to win her heart. He's the hopeless romantic, she is the free spirit, wanting to keep things casual, doesn't want to fall into the norms of a relationship. Where Tom questions this relationship, where she wants to keep it simple and not muddle things. So 500 Days of Summer chronicles the bittersweet beginnings, the sudden break up and all the crazy/ befuddled/ frustrating things that go on in between.
Basically that is the plot, what works is how it is presented, we do not get a linear plot like all those other contrite unreal romantic comedies, what we get is a non linear plot that goes back and forth between Tom and Summer's relationship from the Highs to the Lows. This is refreshing. Where one scene after Tom spent the night with her we see him walk out of the building all smiles the next day (this is his High), as if he can take on the world, he is unstoppable, as if he is glowing, and through out the whole scene we see him do a dance number, shaking hands with people, strangers high fiving him, patting him on the back, he looks in a window and an image of Han Solo looks right back at him... showing him he is the epitome of cool, (what makes it so real is who hasn't felt like that, after spending a night with the one they love, feeling great the next day)
Then we see his Lows, his self loathing, his obsessing on why did they break up, that he thought for sure she was the one, it's gut wrenching real, because again we've been there and done that or had it done to us.
They try to maintain a friendship, Summer invites him to a party and Tom accepts and what we get from this scene is so unique: Where Tom hopes the Universe will finally align itself and his expectations coincide with his reality. A split screen of Tom walking up the stairs to her Apartment, the caption on the Left reads, Expectations, caption on the right reads, Reality, again we as viewers can relate to this scene as it unfolds, Tom's expectations are he and Summer some how reconnect, he gives her a small gift in the form of a book, there's the catching of each others eyes; holding the gaze, the hug, the gentle touching, the laughing, shared moments by themselves, but then he and us viewers are thrust into the reality of the situation. There is no rekindling, she thanks him for the book, through out the party he feels like a stranger in a strange land and he leaves the party in disbelief, in agony, heart broken.... much like what would happen in real life, as we always run through our heads what we think will happen and think will be the perfect evening; finally going to tell her how you feel, you have that nice dinner planned, flowers, she'll be flattered and happy, and say she has the same feelings about you. Thinking it is bullet proof and then to have it all crashing down: either she says she doesn't feel the same way bout you, or she can't make that dinner date, or met someone else, etc etc etc, we so want those events to work and have it play over and over in our minds so the outcome is always positive that when the time comes does it rarely play to our expectations and we are thrust into cold reality. I just had to marvel at this particular scene because one it has happened to me numerous times and I am sure others could say the same thing, A brilliant scene indeed.
What makes this work is the chemistry between Levitt and Deschanel, Levitt playing the forlorn, hopeless, romantic, nice guy, while Deschanel plays Summer as the care free, beautiful, sexy, men take a second glance at her kind of girl, this relationship works so harmoniously even through the tough parts of the break up, we as viewers can't help but think that somehow they do stay together, that even I thought the typical Hollywood ending would come in and they get back together... but then it be classified as your conventional love story and that is not what the filmmakers and actors didn't want it to be, it's about that love is a cold hard bitch slap that we all have felt, which as I said earlier that we all can relate too.
Kudos to the great writing, and chemistry between the actors, making something so real, and honest it's hard to do in Hollywood when everyone wants to see a Sandra Bullock Rom/Com. We all see a little Tom in us and we've all had that one Summer; I guess the message of the movie is people come into your lives for a reason, whether it be friends or the "He's/ She's the one!" moment and it turns out it's not, and that relationships come and go, new ones will be forged, and just hold onto the memories of the old ones no matter how good or bad they were, somehow they made you who you are now, I feel that how it was for Tom's case.
A great movie I must say, worth checking out, what made it so real is because I think we've all been there and felt what Tom felt.
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This movie nails three things. That's all you need to know(1) that first rush of love and passion. The movie's fantasy dance sequence after Tom (Gordon-Levitt) falls for Summer (Deschanel) and that idiotic happiness is just the way it feels .. . I've never seen it done better.
(2) the anger and frustration when it's clear that there is an emotional disconnect between the characters; Tom again perfect.
(3) The pain of withdrawal and slow recovery make no mistake, this is love addiction where a character goes cold turkey. It's tough to watch.
I don't know if women relate to this movie in the same way, but this is a movie that is A Good Guy's perspective on finding and losing love without ever really knowing the woman whom he loves and why it doesn't work. As such, Zooey's Summer is an appropriately opaque character. Her feelings, motives intentions, etc., are all below the surface; there are just those amazingly melting eyes. You could argue that her character could be more fully developed, but realistically, I think her character allows Tom to see all that Guys are able to see. Summer and Tom make a good argument for women and men being different species that happen to be genetically capable of reproducing. They are not Mars and Venus; they are more like Mercury and Pluto. Even at their final accidental meeting, Tom is no closer to understanding Summer than he was when he first met her, and it's still not clear how she feels about anything. Zooey's character has a secret heart that is just unknowable to Tom, to the viewer; maybe to Summer as well.
The disjointed, non-linear structure of the movie make the pain easier to tolerate; just a little at a time. It feels like the way you remember a relationship. So five stars for a wonderful and unusual movie. For guys, I think, it's also a True story. That's worth everything.
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The most important 34 seconds of this film take place at the beginning and contain the potential for a film of its own. Those critical moments occur when we briefly learn the backgrounds of the two main characters, Tom and Summer. Tom's path is paved by romantic British pop songs and a mis-reading of *The Graduate*. Summer's trail is blazed by her parents' divorce which leads her to love only 1) her hair, and 2) the fact that she can cut her hair and feel nothing.Applying psychological analysis to a romantic comedy may strike one as deliriously over-the-top, but John Bowlby's attachment theory runs through every vestige of *Five Hundred Days of Summer*. Bowlby's original theory from the 1950s posited that an infant needs to develop a healthy attachment with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Starting in the late 1980s researchers began applying Bowlby's theories to adult romantic relationships. Recently, writers Amir Levine and Rachel Heller published an intelligently written and consumer friendly book called *Attached* that distills these theories. The authors suggest that we tend to follow one of three behavior patterns in our romantic relationships : (The descriptions below are quoted directly from the book description.)
* Anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.
* Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.
* Secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.
Fifty percent of the population is believed to fall into the secure category, and 50% into the insecure designation (anxious and avoidant types are split almost equally, each representing approximately 25 % of the population).
Tom is anxious and Summer is avoidant.
And certainly, I don't believe that all seven billion human beings on this planet simply fall into one of three categories, but I do believe these descriptions provide us with a vocabulary to discuss individuals' relationship tendencies and expectations.
During the previously indicated 34 seconds, we learn scant little about the past experiences that led Tom and Summer to develop their insecure attachments (although the divorce of Summer's parents is a giant clue). Is it any accident, however, that the opening credits consist solely of a montage of childhood movies? The message is clear : Something was missing in both characters' childhoods. So they wrote their own damaged scripts and have been interpreting the world through the visage of their unhealthy patterns ever sense.
Tom is the naive romantic (an average to unhealthy "4" on the Enneagram, for anyone familiar with Don Riso's work) who hasn't learned how to apply his imagination to produce healthy outcomes, and is instead caught in a dream world while waiting to be rescued by "The One." He means well, but he makes the terrible mistake of projecting his fantasies and desires onto Summer, who is basically the innocent bystander.
Summer is the classic avoidant, lacking in emotional perception and unable to read people's feelings and intentions. She is overprotective of her emotions not to profit, but to guard from pain. Summer is intrigued by love but not willing to commit, insensitive but sometimes charming, nauseatingly inconsistent, and always placing facts over feelings.
Some will argue that Tom is a fool for slobbering over Summer, and others would say he is sweet, sensitive, and deserving. Others would argue that Summer is narcissistic and unfeeling, while others would say she is direct and succinct about what she wants (and Tom is to blame for refusing to pick up the memo). But what we really have here is the classic anxious-avoidant trap playing itself out for the entertainment of the audience and the misery of the participants.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Some would say of my analysis, "Lighten up. Stop the psychobabble. You're overanalyzing." At one time I would have made the mistake of thinking the same thing. I can understand how someone might further respond by saying, "There's no trauma here. Tom is just an innocent dreamer and Summer simply wanted to have her mid-20s fun before settling down with the `right guy,' whom she eventually found anyway. The lesson we learn from the film is that these two tried equally and ultimately weren't meant for each other, but nevertheless transformed each others' way of thinking about love. They grew as a result and took what they learned to the next relationship. It's sweet. All's well that ends well."
I think that's a fair interpretation, but the film's only major flaw is that it lends itself to such an interpretation at all.
Specifically, I'm uncomfortable with Summer's sudden marriage. This isn't entirely inconsistent with avoidant behavior, in that her actions are impulsive. However, the scars from her parents' divorce run much deeper and clearly aren't resolved, and we oughtn't be led to think that her apparent embrace of love has solved a thing. We don't see these scars in her aloof behaviors throughout the film, but clearly she bore witness to all the fighting, hurt, and brokenness of her childhood loss she isn't healed. And just having the "right guy" walk into her life isn't enough to change her world view or shift the satisfaction that she finds from cutting without feeling. In their final scene together, Summer tells Tom she recently danced with him at a friend's wedding simply because she wanted to (with no regard for his feelings). She also says she's glad he's doing well (even though he's obviously not), and she explains that things are different with her husband because "I just woke up and one day I knew... what I was never sure of with you." Her characteristic insensitivity tells us two things : 1) That she has not grown at all due to her time with Tom. She is still oblivious to other people's needs (couldn't she have shared her feelings about her newfound love in a more tender and less hurtful way?). 2) She found Tom too anxious, but is now with a similar albeit more secure partner.
But really, what this means is that the new sucker who fell for her who is clearly more tolerant of her avoidance tendencies than Tom is still going to have to deal with her issues and inconsistencies through the years anyway, possibly to a breaking point. Maybe writer Scott Neustadter was trying to offer an olive branch to the woman on whom he based the Summer character, and maybe he like many anxious types guiltily assumed he shared equal blame when his relationship failed. But it's an enormous mistake to send such a message to the audience.
In the end, the anxious types really do have the legs up over the avoidants. Why? Because anxious types, like Tom, despite having formed insecure attachments, still believe in love and the power of connection. They have more room to grow, are more willing to grow, and if given a safe set of circumstances are willing to do The Work. The avoidants, like Summer, don't want to do The Work, and barring a life-catastrophe (which they are most likely to experience eventually as a result of their avoidance behaviors), are much more comfortable sticking with their old scripts than they are with inviting the pain necessary to break free and live a life that runs in accordance with their true essence.
Toward the end of the film we watch Tom experience the pain of wrestling free of his old illusions about love. He suffers his way to catharsis. Tom's failed relationship with Summer acts as the catalyst for exiting the old script. When he quits the greeting card company he finally rejects the old romantic love songs and movies, re-invests in his true love of architecture, and takes a chance on asking out a woman without projecting any expectations on her. The ability to act as such involved a great deal of prior work, discomfort, and courage, but the result is that a lifetime's worth of unhealthy behaviors are now extinguished.
There is no evidence that Summer's new relationship or her time with Tom led her to do the same. She's still an evolving wreck, and the viewer needs to better understand this when the movie ends. She tells Tom she has accepted the idea of love, and that he played a role in transforming her thought process, but I can't imagine that this transition could have occurred so quickly and easily. My guess is that Summer still has a lot of work to do to move past the associations she has lived with for years as a result of her parents' divorce.
Clearly both these individuals benefited as a result of being in each others' lives, but only Tom grabbed the oncoming train and soared into his future. The anxious and avoidant types both had it wrong, but only the anxious type worked after-the-fact to make things right. Anxious types may hold the sparkling snow too tight, but the avoidants turn the snow into a snowball and hurl it at anyone who dares to break down their walls.
So on a less analytical and more heartfelt note, I loved the movie. Yes, it's a romantic comedy, but it's Hemingway-esque sad, with 90% of the emotion weeping beneath the surface. It's sad when relationships don't work out. It's sad when people enter our world, make an impact, and then leave. It's sad that we can't stay close to all those we loved, all who loved us, and all who have ever mattered in our lives.
The film rang true because I had my own Tom-Summer experience, and scene after scene felt like a mosaic of intertwined frames from my own life. The unexpected bursts of affection, the trying to impress her with music while she doesn't even seem to notice, the checking the cell phone in the middle of the night, the waiting patiently for the moment she will finally come around, the complete exhaustion at being forced to live between the gap of the expectations and the reality... Ugh.
It's good to be reminded that we are not alone in our experiences. Others make the same foolish mistakes that we do in the game of love, and it's easy to lose sight of common sense when the heart is plunged in the depths. We are reminded that we can still have a sense of humour about it all and that hearts really do heal. Well, most of the time anyway.
The soundtrack is great too. So are the quirky cultural references Pac-Man, Henry Miller, The Smiths, and a dog named after Bruce Springsteen. All are intelligently presented and not wrought with intellectual and cultural self-consciousness. The non-linear narrative is cleverly delivered, the acting performances from all parties are strong, and the "You Make My Dreams Come True" sequence is one of the funniest I have ever seen on film. I also appreciate that amidst the lighter moments, the film is not afraid to take itself seriously. Maybe too many people suffer from Bono-fatigue, but these days too many artists go out of their way to poke a hole in the seriousness of their work so as to earn the "s/he doesn't take him/herself too seriously" moniker. This film is brave. It is serious, and it takes itself seriously when it needs to.
So, I didn't assign this film five stars, primarily because I save five stars for films of unparalleled impact, but also because I didn't completely buy parts of the ending. Nevertheless, this one's a gem. We are treated to great directing, great writing, great acting, and a lot to think about. *Five Hundred Days of Summer* and the implications of those early 34 seconds are well worth the 95 minute journey.
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