(500) Days of Summer
From the simple text prologue onward, (500) Days of Summer had me at hello. Having been thoroughly sold on this movie by the trailer, I approached it with relatively high expectations; however, knowing my lousy luck whenever I hold less than dire expectations for new movies, especially the romantic kind, I would not have been surprised if this flick wound up sucking something awful, but after the opening credits, the non-linear narrative drew me in and made what could otherwise have been a routine romantic procedural into a bit of a puzzle. I was curious to see how everything played out, and as the story progressed this feeling stayed with me till the very end. This was more than just a narrative gimmick; it was way to get the viewer squarely inside Tom's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) head, and this fragmentary style becomes important later on.
Once Tom met the eponymous Summer (Zooey Deschanel), I became filled with the now unfamiliar glee (as of this writing) that any truly compelling screen romance gives you. I loved the amazingly awkward start and eagerly sat back for their tenuous chemistry to blossom into something more. One of (500) Days main themes deals with those small but significant moments between two people that approach greatness yet are clouded with uncertainty. Moments that can make someone wonder if the other person was feeling the same thing or if it was only an illusion. The karaoke scene captured this best, and, for a time, I felt that things could have equally gone one of two ways from the way they played out. This ambiguous edge remains throughout much of the film and gives it an immediacy not often seen in cinematic romances, because despite this movie's tongue-in-cheek denials to the contrary, this is a love story; but, mostly, it's a story about how romantic preconceptions can cloud relationships.
The fast cuts and intermixed scenes of the film wound up saying a lot more about how one sees the world than I ever expected. Here, style and substance were very much the same. I'm normally not impressed much by flash and technique if the story or the characters aren't there, but this movie had the perfect blending of both. Its very presentation in the form of gorgeously nuanced cinematography, the thematically relevant transitions that marked the passage of the 500 days, the production design — I loved Summer's room, and Tom's, for that matter — the cutting, the deft use of effects, all of it brought me deeper and deeper into this world. Over the course of the proceedings, I was genuinely wooed, and that's what made this movie so amazing for a such cold, disconnected bastard like me.
What impressed me so much was that even though the film wryly espoused the folly of romance by way of perfect and sparing, though effectively, used narration, it made me want to see these two crazy kids live happily ever after… badly. The irony of this is that the main thing that interested me about (500) Days was that it, on the surface, was about the refutation of so many of the romantic illusions that most rom-comedies promote. Yet, the harder things got, the more tightly I found myself clinging to the very romantic cliches I'd come to despise. Though many of the scenes where Tom is pinning over Summer are sometimes familiar, they are given a new depth when balanced against his subsequent encounters with her. Those moment are among the movie's most poignant, beautiful, and painful, and when the final credits rolled I was uplifted by the film's hopeful message — that putting yourself out there and taking the risks and the hardships that go with them is the only way to find happiness. Despite all that, I initially found the experience far more affecting than I would have liked because I still bled from the wounds of the journey. There aren't many romantic comedies I can think of that have had that kind of lasting impact, and I believe the tagline clearly states what makes (500) Days of Summer so great; “This is not a love story. This is a story about love.”
