OK film fans, it's Sunday night and I'm feeling pretty lazy. I was going to post something easy, an old favorite or a goofy comedy, but I happened to visit my sister today and she told me she had just watched a film I had recommended to her. We talked about it for a bit since she said she had enjoyed and I asked her if I could borrow it (good ole Netflix) so I could re-watch it. Now, I had recommended this film to friends and family after one viewing when it first came out, but I was looking forward to re-watching it because during the initial viewing I found myself uncomfortable for about half of the film. I must admit that for a good 30 to 45 minutes I was beginning to hate this film.
500 Days of Summer is an unusually structured film that, as Roger Ebert points out, "begins by telling us how it will end and is about how the hero has no idea why." It also begins by telling us that this is not a typical love story. Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt hitting full stride as a young actor) meets and immediately falls for the new girl in his office, Summer (Zooey Deschanel, my actress crush). The feeling is not mutual. That is not to say that she doesn't take a liking to him, she does, she just doesn't expect it to lead anywhere.
This is a common storyline in romantic comedies but it gets a twist and some fresh perspective thanks to a marvelous script from its first time scribes. Immediately it lets us know where Tom stands: he is enthralled with all things Summer and lets his intentions be known to his friends and family. 28 days from their first meeting, during a foreshadowing karaoke scene, we discover that Summer's ideas of relationships and love are starkly different from his. We know what day it is thanks to the labeling of the days that precede each new scene. We purposefully jump from Day 27 to Day 290 to Day 134 all in an effort to make us realize this film will not remotely attempt to tell a linear story. More astutely, it tells the story the way you might remember someone from your past, lingering on important days, both good ones and bad. And when you've recently been dumped you always start with the good. It takes more time and reflection to remember the bad.
This is important because, while Summer likes Tom, we find out early and often that typical Hollywood assigned gender roles have indeed been switched. And in this detail is where I find the script fresh, clever and painfully insightful. I've heard before that in all relationships there's a pursuer and the pursued. Someone always loves the other person just a little more than they're loved back. Here's a film that takes countless rom-com story lines about guys who are flippant or oblivious about a girls love and flips it. It works because its true and this film, like a modern descendant of the "Say Anything" species, sticks to its premise faithfully. Well, not entirely, there is a bit of Hollywood in its DNA, as evident in its ending.
Despite us knowing from the outset essentially how the film will end we find ourselves in Tom's shoes, reliving the days and trying to figure out how he ended up with a broken heart. In yet another wise script choice, we never fully understand who Summer is or why she makes her decisions, similar to the way we never fully understand how or why a partner in a relationship comes to their decisions. Summer sends mixed messages to Tom, she states she doesn't like being some one's girlfriend, she isn't looking for anything serious, just casual and yet she is the instigator of their first kiss and their first night together. They have tons in common, from their hipster dress styles to music and literature tastes. But these are superficial commonalities and Tom throws all of her cautionary statements to the side and blindly continues his pursuit, deliriously happy.
In some movies his traits, persistence, faithfulness and charm, would win him the girl. In some men's' lives this happens as well. But as Tom learns, these traits will not always help you win the girl, especially when the girl has told you this up front. I'll come clean here; this is what threw me while watching the film. I have been in Tom's shoes. I have been the pursuer and not been able to convince the pursued that I was the right choice. I have ignored the telltale signs that things are not going to end well, primarily for me, and blindly fell in love. I painfully learned that when a woman states she isn't looking for anything serious, 9 times out of 10 that exactly what she means.
Because of this (and probably my crush on Zooey) I began to resent Summer's actions and find her character cruel and mean spirited. And until I realized why, the effect it was having on me I found rather upsetting. If you watch the film casually you might come to the same conclusion. But all the signs are there to serve as warnings to young Tom. Even though Summer's actions sometimes belie her words and the finality of their relationship is presented in a way that can be at best described as absentmindedly cruel, Tom ensures his own heartbreak by not heading these warnings. Tom would not be Summer's last love, but he learns an invaluable lesson from her. He learns to listen to himself. He also learns how to play the Penis Game.
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