500 Days of Summer Review
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel Star in One of 2009's Best
Aug 20, 2009
500 Days of Summer asserts its position right from the outset: it is a story of boy meets girl but it is not a love story. And that’s true, even though it knows more about love than any single American film since John Cusack dealt with his top five former lovers in High Fidelity.
Instead, it is a montage of memories and recollections that flash by in an order which they may have in any individual’s mind. Some of the memories are idealized, some of them romanticized, but all of them contain a deep human truth. This is not because the way they are seen is the way they actually happened but because they recall the wishful way everyone sees the past - on their own terms. It’s a time when all romance was poetry and all heartbreak was tragedy. Remember that idyllic narration from Alfonso Cuaron’s take on Great Expectations: “This is not the story the way it happened. This is the story the way I remember it.”
Remembering Romance
And isn’t that how everyone tells their stories, under the guise of literary hyperbole, as if every young love is Dickensian, every sexual escapade Millerian and everything else, insert favorite author here? So no, this is not a love story, it’s a recollection of a time when Tom Hansen (a man who believes that he is not happy unless he is with the girl that was meant for him) remembers the time when he thought he almost found her. Her name was Summer and as a child she says she had two loves: her long dark hair, and her utter lack of emotion when cutting it all off.
The two don’t seem compatible on the surface: he wants a love that he can cherish and define and rely on to be everlasting and tries to project that on her. She just wants some fun with a friend who can accept that she doesn’t want to be suffocated by commitment. Their attraction begins for the same reason any attraction begins: they both like the Smiths, foreign art film, etc. When Tom is startled to find that Summer’s favorite Beatle is Ringo Starr, she explains that it’s because he’s no one’s favorite Beatle. It seems this logic is more or less the same thing driving Tom's infatuation: she’s the one no one will ever have.
The film jumps back and forth between the innocent beginnings of friendship that blooms into an office fling at the company where Tom writes greeting cards and Summer acts as his boss’ assistant. It follows them as they hang out, renting adult flicks to get inspiration for new moves, but it ends in bitterness and resentment as Tom grows impatient with Summer’s refusal to define their relationship. Finally, when her fun runs out, she simply gives up on him.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel
Tom is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who started his career in sitcomland playing an alien playing a human in 3rd Rock from the Sun. He kept a low profile and then reemerged into tricky art films, establishing himself, one film at a time, as one of America’s most valuable character actors. He’s so good, his range so broad, that he rarely gets to show what an endearing presence he can be as is the case here. Compare his loving, funny, delicate performance as Tom to his sneering, evil one as the villain of G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and see an actor who can do just about anything.
He’s paired with Zooey Deschanel as Summer. Deschanel appeared in insignificant secondary roles before breaking lose in one of the best American films of the decade, David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls and is now, at this point in her career, worthy enough to be considered the most delightful, quirky, delicate and beautiful actress since Debra Winger. Winger is perhaps the only actress who, in her prime, could have played Summer this well.
The film is the directorial debut of Marc Webb who has directed a number of music videos. Like many music video directors, he approaches the material with an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. Webb recreates Tom’s memories through animation, dreams, a split screen showing Tom’s expectations from an encounter with Summer verses the reality of that situation and even an elaborate musical dance number, which is exactly the right tone for this film. Who hasn’t woken up at least one day and felt so lifted by love that they just wanted to break out into song and dance?
Verdict
Here is a film so wonderful and uplifting that it is darn close to Felliniesque. One can feel its life and energy and keen observation of human nature vibrating off the screen through every frame, with not one wasted moment. Every scene is born under the observation of how people like to reconstruct the past and try to make some sort of poetic significance out of a collection of random events, moving into the future a little more enlightened because of it. 500 Days of Summer may be Tom’s story but the approach is universal: when it comes to matters of the heart everyone is revealed as the poets and philosophers of the bygone.
And, because every great story is simple by nature, the film is then the simple story of how two people of opposing viewpoints came together, learned in each other and departed with new outlooks. By the end of the film, Summer has realized that maybe destiny isn’t just a figment of the imagination. Tom realizes that maybe life is just a collection of random moments after all, that most days are forgettable for their lack of remarkableness and any success is pure coincidence…Well, almost.
This is one of the year’s best films.
