Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer
Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)
“(500) Days of Summer” is, on a first glance, and for the first half, a breath of fresh air. Yes, it says it’s not a love story, but it is most certainly a romantic comedy. And I am happy that it tries to shake off the shackles of romantic comedy formula.
You can be happy for what’s not here. No “meet cute”. No instant contempt for one another to modify. No current jerk of a boyfriend or girlfriend to be dumped with no conscience. No last minute race to the airport. No heartfelt protestation of love in a crowd of warmhearted strangers.
In fact, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) meet in the most prosaic of ways, in the greeting card company at which they both work. Neither has a previous encumbrance to shed. They don’t instantly take an active dislike to one another, and there is no last minute race to the airport, simply because the woman has decided she wants nothing more to do with the man, at least romantically. In fact, she tells him she wants to break up and then says nonchalantly how good the pancakes they have been served look. And in case you are shocked that I have revealed the ending, well the movie preview itself does the same, and the movie itself tells you what’s going to happen in the first five minutes.
Director Marc Webb and screenwriters, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, jump backwards and forwards in time throughout the film and show us both the main characters’ meeting and their break up almost back to back. On the other hand, why is this a surprise? Some of the best romantic comedies, including “Annie Hall”, which brought its own fresh take to the genre, do not end with the couple getting together.
What happens here is that Tom and Summer work for a Los Angeles greeting card company. He seems interested in her, but is too shy to do anything about it, convinces himself initially that she has a lover and later that she may be gay. They eventually do get together but then she tells him she doesn’t believe in love – her mother and father are divorced. Tom has always believed in love and the one right person, largely – so the film’s narration tells us – to an early exposure to sad British pop music and an early misreading of the movie “The Graduate”.
Like most who have fallen in love with an initially doubtful partner, Tom decides Summer’s skepticism is primarily a result of uncertainty, and that if they do get together she will slowly change her mind. Hope springs eternal.
One of the nicer things about this film is that it’s not afraid to tell us that men have romantic aspirations too. Lately there’s been a new sub-genre of romantic comedy which is about the fat raunchy slob getting the beautiful girl. They are trying rather hard to provide something to persuade males into the cinema. This one has no such solace for those who like to consider themselves more testosterone driven.
(500) Days of Summer, as I said, is best in its opening moments, including the film’s “dedication” to one Jenny Beckman. Its dialogue is funny without being too contrived, the jumping around in time is initially interesting, the characters are both more or less likeable, due almost solely to the on-screen personas of the actors. The couple appear a well-suited yuppie couple, walking around Ikea and make-believing it’s their home, sharing a fondness for the music of The Smiths, disagreeing about which Beatle is the most talented – she thinks it was Ringo Starr. But, after a while I began to feel that while the movie was on the surface ringing the changes from the romantic comedy, it didn’t go much beyond that surface. The jumps in chronology make it increasingly hard for you to realize where you are in the relationship, and in the film. The movie could end in two minutes or two hours. It’s less than an hour and a half, but it feels longer.
This can work. It did so with superb effect in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, which is one of my all time favourite love stories, but there you always knew exactly where the movie was heading.
At times, Marc Webb goes for the obvious. Having them both work in a greetings card company, where Tom is employed to write schmaltzy messages, is rather too obvious for a movie talking about real versus ersatz romance. And the characters are rather superficial. He is apparently a trained architect, who is working here because that “didn’t work out”. Once they have broken up he finds himself not wanting to do greetings cards any more and wanting to get back into his original profession. But why? And although it doesn’t seem exactly easy, his path back to architecture (like his departure from it) begs far too many questions. Even if his character is a little formulaic though, hers is worse.
Summer is the formulaic romance object. She’s kind of cute, kind of quirky, but she isn’t about anything. At least he has his old career. She has nothing. She likes this or that pop music. She doesn’t believe in love, at least initially. But she has no ambition, no dreams, no direction, nothing she even feels particularly strongly about. You wouldn’t even know whether she’d vote Republican or Democrat. “Annie Hall” in comparison was not only a bundle of neuroses, she also had determined ideas about where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do. And those inevitably impinged on the relationship. Did Webb and his scriptwriters decide to make Summer a thin character so more people like her, or did they simply not think a more definite character would suit their drama? You sometimes get the idea that the filmmakers are more interested in playing with the form than creating apparently a living and breathing young couple.
There’s formula too in the rather irritating wise-beyond-her-years younger sister (Chloë Grace Moretz), and in his two buddies (played by Matthew Gray Gubler and Geoffrey Arend), there really to be a foil to his romantic illusions. And yet, there are moments of real insight here you won’t find in many romantic comedies. There are some great lines. And it is a movie that gives you the freedom to see the characters in more than one way. There are moment where you just feel Summer is an entirely self-centred and dislikeable character, and the eventual romantic outcome of her life might have more to do with status and wealth than much else. A cynic would say it’s just unfortunate for Tom he’s not a successful architect when they meet. And the movie gives you room for that interpretation.
The film’s single best scene though for me involved the movie Tom misreads: “The Graduate”. So many people have watched that film, seen Dustin Hoffman as Ben run to the church, seen Katherine Ross as Elaine decide to leave her family and fiancé and run off with him, and then seen them sitting on the bus, her still in her wedding dress. Superficially it’s a happy ending, but then Mike Nichols keeps the camera on their faces as both of them begin to wonder what they have done, and what they are going to do next. It is in fact potentially the opposite of a happy ending.
Here, Tom and Summer go to see the movie. He loves it. She bursts into tears at the sadness. It’s a beautifully done scene and one of many moments when “(500) Days of Summer” references other good movies about love. It’s just unfortunate that occasionally, despite its insight and humour, it also reminds you that those movies were actually also more profound than this one.
