January 5, 2010: (500) Days of Summer
I was almost scared to see (500) Days of Summer, because it had reviewed fairly well and I like both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I’m a bit of a sucker for “consciously indie” films (Deschanel was also present the last time I rolled out that controversial term) and like many others, I seek the perfect romantic comedy. That’s a lot of weight for a film to carry, and I tried not to build up my expectations too much.
Well, it’s probably good that I tempered my expectations since this is certainly not a perfect film, but it was indeed among the best I’ve seen this year. Deliberately and successfully surreal, but with real things to say about relationships and delightful ways of saying them, it did still suffer from some thin supporting characters, occasional awkward dialogue (the gag about college nicknames was funny but completely out of place), and a too-convenient ending. Despite the occasional stumble, this remains a funny, touching and perceptive film, with some great writing making it a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for its original screenplay. It also doesn’t take the predictable easy way out at the end, which is worth a lot.
(500) Days of Summer is about a boy who meets a girl. Over the space of 500 days, he goes through the usual range of obsessing over her, trying to woo her, sort of succeeding, eventually encountering rough times, and trying to pick up the pieces and salvage the relationship. Tom believes in the concept of “The One”, that there is one right person for everybody, and Summer disagrees. Eventually she comes to agree with Tom. The story is told in sequences of varying length, always labeled with the particular day (out of 500) on which the scene happened. This hopping timeline is exactly the way someone might relive the heartache of an up-and-down relationship after the fact, shifting abruptly from good memories to bad, trying to figure out whether the signs of trouble were obvious and simply ignored.
What I like is how these emotional journeys are handled. The two main characters are fairly young, but they are mature. They have clearly thought about what they are looking for in life, yet they accept that life won’t play out exactly as they hope it will. This film perfectly captures the way women drive men crazy without really trying to and without it actually being their fault, and at the same time a common perspective of women is depicted, when they are happy to be in a relationship but not necessarily wanting to fall into the trap of labelling what they have. Gender roles are of course reversed in real life sometimes – the film doesn’t take the position that all men are alike and all women are alike and they are always pitted against one another in some battle with an eventual winner and loser. The conversation at the end of the movie is refreshingly honest. I wish more people could be that honest more often, even when it’s painful, because it would save a lot of misunderstanding and resentment.
I’ve been a Zooey Deschanel fan since she played the stewardess sister of the main character in Almost Famous (2000) – I feel I can use the term “stewardess” since the film was set in the early 1970s. I have since enjoyed her work in Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and Gigantic (2008) among other films. She’s associated with quirky characters, and she doesn’t break that habit here. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was more or less unknown to me until a few years ago. I vaguely knew of him from the TV show 3rd Rock From the Sun, but didn’t take any serious note of his acting until Brick (2005) and The Lookout (2005), both of which were tour-de-force performances in flawed but ambitious films which are both well worth seeing. He proves here that he can still play a more conventional leading man, bringing humanity to the role, which isn’t always easy in what is essentially a romantic comedy. (500) Days of Summer is pretty much a two-person show, and these two pull it off.
An interesting point I’d like to note is that this film was set in Los Angeles, not that it’s immediately obvious. The events take place almost entirely in the core of the city, with skyscrapers in the background and urban parks in the landscape and people walking around. People tend to associate the movie version of Los Angeles with the luxurious Hollywood hills, the exclusive beach communities, or the rough inner-city suburbs, but it’s often forgotten that there’s a whole downtown district presumably populated by a bunch of people who don’t live in their cars 24×7. Some of the significant if not particularly well-known architecture is featured, which is important to the plot since Tom is an aspiring (and trained) architect. It’s neat to see this other angle on a city which I have visited but have never really come to appreciate.
This is an easy film to recommend, although I’d also suggest keeping expectations in check. It’s no magical genre-transcending generation-defining film, despite what you’ll hear from some critics, but unless you hate the mere mention of romantic comedies, it shouldn’t disappoint.
Deeper than a typical genre entry.
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