Give it up for a cinematic love story that’s not afraid to explore all the nuances of love – both the joy and the heartache – using two believable, relatable characters. In an age of over-dramatized soap flicks or callous one-nighter movies, (500) Days of Summer is the sunlight breaking through the clouds.
The story owes a large debt to films like The Graduate (which gets name-checked several times in the film, in fantastic ways) than to the typical list of romantic comedies. Being a major romantic myself, it added another layer of enjoyment to the film that it’s the male lead who is the more lovesick. This doesn’t pop up as much in cinema as I would like, and whenever it does, it right away sets the film off from its peers.
Said male lead in Summer is Tom (one of today’s best working actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who gets perhaps one of the greatest introductions on film in a while, from the movie’s narrator: “Tom Hansen of New Jersey, grew up believing he’d never truly be happy until the day he met the one. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total misread of the movie, The Graduate.” When Tom meets Summer (the enchanting Zooey Deschanel) at the office where he works writing greeting cards, be believes that day has come.
What follows is the story of their relationship, told Memento-style, jumping around chronologically, as they go from boy-meets-girl, down the familiar relationship path, with some major hitches in the road. The biggest being that Summer doesn’t believe in love, or in “being anyone’s anything.” Still, Tom breaks down her walls as their story progresses, but as the narrator warns, “this is not a love story. This is a story about love.”
You’ll have to watch the film to see what the actual difference is, and its no fair spoiling the ending, but what viewers get is a much more in-depth examination of all that goes along with being in love than most movies provide. There’s the brutality of going back in one’s mind in an attempt to find the moment things started to sour, the complete and utter difference between reality and expectations when one sees their ex again, and of course, the joys of first getting together. Audiences will be hard-pressed to find a movie that more accurately describes being in love.
Major props go out to director Marc Webb and writers Scott Neustadler and Michael H. Weber for crafting a film that allows visuals to take the place of dialogue in describing how a character feels – the dancing scene after Tom and Summer’s first night together is one of the purest expressions of joy on film of the summer.
Of course, the real power of the film is Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel, who join John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph from Away We Go, as two actors who bring everything to the table in their portrayals of being a couple. Deschanel is at her quirkiest and most charming, and she’s never looked lovelier. It’s a no-brainer why Tom falls for her from word one. Gordon-Levitt continues his streak of fantastic performances bringing all manner of wit and heartache to Tom. These two make you believe in their love, the way the classic movie couples did. The film feels less like something that was written, and more like videos of real life, their acting is so vibrant.
Summer is winding down and Autumn’s on the way, but there’s no better way to catch some of the last summer joy than (500) Days of Summer. Its one for the ages.
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