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| 500 days of Summer (2009). A different taste of Romantic movie. A love story more of the masculine type and the virile ego. |
Most of the time, love story films are of womanish scheme and are about shuffled fun times and fault lines of the main female character. But this one is of another type, as men’s fidelity and sunshine are on precedence—on how they dream, envisage and grease their elbows for true and eternal love.
500 Days of Summer is a perfect film of perfectly blended bliss and blues that enliven typical romantic trope with reality. It focuses on trouble-filled relationship struggling for subsistence of romantic oxygen. It is a quirky romantic tragicomedy shedding the painful side of romance and embracing the lessons of the male romantic ego.
The film stared independent film actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt who played the role of Tom, a would-be architect and greeting card writer idling in LA for true love with his bold idea of one day spotting his soul mate and living with the life he wanted to have. Until he met Summer Finn, portrayed by Zooey Deschanel, a product of divorce, a smart and vintage-looking woman whose ideas are entirely modern and isn’t even entertaining the idea of love.
The day Tom first sets his eyes on Summer is the day he falls in love to her. They had built a jokey, flirtatious and giggly relationship that lasted for 500 days—bouncing from the good to the bad to the awkward, laughing, crying, sighing and sympathizing, despite the silliness and phoniness of everything that surrounds them. They played it for real, especially for Summer who bears prizing independence and treated the affair as a lark, but with a comprehension of subtlety and feeling that goes beyond the call of breezy duty.
As Tom remembers his 500 days with Summer randomly, out of narrative order, he grasped how painful the bruising business is. It seemed that the problem is that he believes in love while the other does not.
To find this a bit unrealistic, and so he blames movies, music and television for corrupting his idea of what love should ultimately look like.
Summer ends the relationship serenely—a shattering blow to the virile ego. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, a heart getting ripped out, a man on oblivion.
Who will forget the excellent scene in which, ages after their break-up, they immediately had a chance to meet again hoping that the old magic will be back on, as Tom shows up for a party that Summer had thrown and the action unfolds in split-screen showing the “Expectation” of winning Summer back and “Reality” with gradual sickening divergence.
Director Marc Webb is exceptional for his style; breathing fresh life into another funny relationship flit. With the touching script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webber that visualizes every man’s best-case-scenario and worst nightmare together, side by side.
Moreover, Webb also adds an innovative style to the spectacle, combining naturalistic look at love with non-linear scenes, comical vignettes and triumphant musical sequence from songs by Regina Spektor, Doves, Wolfmother and The Smiths that brings Summer and Tom together. The film’s mixture of cynicism and romance makes it perfect for the joyful couples, the recently dumped and the hopeful celibates.
The 500 days that define the beginning, middle and end of Tom and Summer proved that it is not a love story, but rather a story about love as what the film says. And as typical love story goes, the film ends full of hope, having great start anew and a better season for Tom.
500 Days of Summer is a thoroughgoing film for all—handsome guy looking for love, pretty girl looking for companionship, dorky best friends inserted for comical reliefs, split screen telephone calls, bad drunk karaoke. Undeniably complete.
Surely, everyone can go on with the film for we are such aficionados for movies we can relate into. Most especially the virile side, this is more of a tribute.
Some scenes from 500 Days of Summer
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