By Danny Contreras
Love stories in the latter half of the 2000’s weakly defined the genre. Take any film based on a Nicholas Sparks book and you get the same story across the broad with the only difference being the setting and the characters.
It makes sense why people buy these stories. We all know love sucks. It’s time consuming, requires too much effort and hurts. Sparks-like stories numb viewers to the realities of love. They rely on weak plot devices such as love at first sight, not so interesting town people, opposite family values, destiny and so on.
(500) Days of Summer relies on these devices as well, but in a different manner. They’re used more realistically. The boring town is still there, destiny and love at first sight too. But they’re not the elements that drive the story forward. Instead, the idea that love is not the same for everyone shines through in the film.
The Catch-22-like film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Lookout, Inception) as the love-sick Tom Hansen, an architect-turned-greeting card writer in Los Angeles. Opposite Levitt is the goddess that is Zooey Deschanel (Elf, Yes Man) as the rebellious, Smiths-loving college graduate Summer Finn.
There’s a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that the story is not a love story. An ambivalent claim because there are two ways of watching this film with two different endings (not explicitly, of course).
One way to watch this nonlinear narrative is to pay attention only to Tom and his personality. He is a hopeless romantic, with dreams of finding that special girl depicted in many love stories. Tom would marry her, they would have kids and live happily ever after.
The other way to see the film is by dismissing Tom and paying attention to Summer. She is a rebellious character who became disillusioned with love when her parents divorced when she was a teenager. The two meet as coworkers and their views on love clash as the relationship develops. Each one not validating the other’s view.
The supporting cast is composed of Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In) who plays Tom’s sister, Geoffrey Arend (The Ringer, Devil) as Tom’s coworker and best friend and Matthew Gray Gubler (RV, Alvin and the Chipmunks) as Tom’s other best friend. The characters are very underdeveloped, mainly in part because they’re meant to be Tom’s conscience and not fully-fleshed characters themselves. But the standout performance goes to Moretz because she plays a very mature role and she is the part of Tom that is supposed to make sense of things when his rationality doesn’t. The other two pretty much just fade into the background with only a handful of major events accredited to their character.
(500) Days of Summer will depress you. It cuts out the paradigm set by Sparks-inspired films and Twilight. It’s realistic, almost too real and it hurts you. You identify with Tom or Summer, never both. And it is this quality that makes (500) Days of Summer a must watch.
