I've been in a very melancholic mood recently so I figured that this was the best time to write a review of one of my favorite movies of 2009, (500) Days of Summer. A movie that I've championed ever since I saw it in the summer. My desire to see it was so much that I traveled to Boston to the only theater that was showing it. It was still in very limited release at that time and I just couldn't wait. What was shown to me was a movie that was able to show all the highs and lows of romance while never making things too depressing.
Joseph-Gordon Levitt plays Tom, a young guy who writes greeting cards. He wants to be an architect but life has brought him to this job in L.A.. He's kind of fallen into the routine of his 9 to 5 job when he meets Summer Finn, played by the ever cute Zooey Deschanel. A small town girl who is the type of girl that every guy with a pulse falls in love with. He's kinda shy, smart, idealistic, he believes in "true" love. She's spontaneous, funny, flighty, and doesn't believe in love. One day they share an elevator and Summer hears Tom listening to The Smiths on his headphones. She states her shared love for them and thus it starts. He is immediately smitten. He barely knows her and he doesn't believe that things like that are simple coincidence. He pursues her and they begin a relationship. But as the trailers and the poster for this film stated, this is not a love story but a story about love.
Director Marc Webb and writers Scott Neustadtler and Michael H. Weber structure the story in non-chronological order and don't feel an obligation to remain fully grounded in reality. They understand that when you're in love then things don't feel like they're on the same plane of reality as everything else. Things feel heightened, colors seem brighter, the world seems like it's moving to your beat. But they also know that when you're heart is broken then everything is drained of all those things that you were so appreciative of when you were in love.
The story jumps from point to point in Tom and Summer's relationship. A happy day is juxtaposed with a bad day. Some days are shown are failed attempts to rekindle a previous day that was tinged with excitement. At some points in the film we see the same day but with a different view on what was really going on. Of what was truly happening in front of those rose colored glasses that are ever present when you're in love. We see a relationship in it's first baby steps in one scene and then in it's final death throes in the next scene.
Bringing all of this together is one of the best soundtracks in recent memory. One of those types of soundtracks that stays with you long after you've finished the movie. The Smiths, The Pixies, Temper Trap, Regina Spektor and Wolfmother all add lots of appropriate fun and angst to fill out the movie. It perfectly marries itself to the story and it's now impossible for me to separate the two.
I think one of the reasons this movie resonates so much with me is that it feels so much like something that the late Francois Truffaut would have done. He was a filmmaker that believed that love was unconditional until reality started to set in. He made movies about idealized love. About men who refused to let the world tell them who they could love, no matter how many obstacles stood in their way. Men who would almost always end up broken hearted. I especially recommend a short film he did called "Antoine and Colette". It's encapsulates to perfection the concept of idealized love.
Now, some might complain that the movie makes love too black and white, it simplifies it in order to be cute. And my argument towards that is, who cares? This a movie that builds it's own reality and is content in living in it for most of the running time. It is only once the relationship is over that things stop being cute and Tom finally lets reality back in. He grows up and makes important life changes. He finally realizes that some relationships are there for you to learn from, to grow from. Meanwhile, the movie doesn't let go of it's cute streak and decides to give us one final ellipsis. A chance at something new for Tom. And a very appropriately named one too.
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