Review: 500 Days of Summer
Sometimes it’s not always about the girl. Solid character development is crucial in any story. We want to understand, relate to actions, reflect, and if we’re left without answers we undoubtedly question. In the film 500 Days of Summer, which follows 500 days of a disastrous relationship, the audience is left perplexed by Summer, the indie muse portrayed by Zooey Deschanel. Upon appearance, we see a gorgeous dark-haired, blue-eyed girl who likes to keep the mood light, staying clear from seriousness. Yet, her actions speak to her closed, detached personality, quite possibly the result of her parent’s divorce. Her actions show she doesn’t understand herself and it’s too much to demand that from her character, at least during the majority of the film. The end is another story, but I’ll get to that later.
However, the film is not about the girl as the title mysteriously indicates. It’s about Tom played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the other half of the relationship, as the narrative follows his actions scene-to-scene of his 500-day journey. From the very beginning we know the couple’s fate, but what’s more interesting are the hints of insecurity, expectations, distractions obvious in each moment of the relationship.
There’s a key scene that simply illustrates a common relationship mishap and what I took away as the point of the whole movie, which is our expectations versus reality. The scene does this cleverly with a split screen of actions in both worlds. How often do we expect something, but find ourselves in quite a different situation than we hoped? You’d be lying if you said this has never happened to you. In typical independent fashion, the film is glossed with stylized scenes – French New Wave, a Disney-esque musical song and dance, Summer as a 1950s Donna Reed type, but all these artistic interpretations have purpose, showing Tom’s romanticized, rose-colored point of view – not only with Summer, but with life.
Yes, there were flaws in this film. I thought the ending fell a little flat and that Summer’s transformation left something to be desired, but overall the film was enjoyable. It had many tender, funny, sad moments where I found myself smiling, laughing, empathizing, cringing, and relating. I got it and definitely recommend it for others to see.
