(500) Days of Summer
In theaters Friday: Inglourious Basterds, Post Grad
New on DVD/Blu-ray: The Last House on the Left, Tyson
If I had actually purchased She & Him, Zooey Deschanel’s duets record with M. Ward, then I would have burned it or smashed it to pieces after watching the end of her new film, (500) Days of Summer. Not often do we get villains with cutesy bangs and big blue tea saucer eyes. But if her free-spirited, commitment-phobic chanteuse, Summer Finn, isn’t the devil in disguise, then I don’t know who is.
As a grandfatherly voiceover informs us at the beginning, this is a story of boy-meets-girl, but it is not a love story because he believes in the L word, and she doesn’t. It’s even less of a love story than High Fidelity, a film that shares both a similar guy-centric tone and stellar taste in music. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Tom Hanson, a failed architecture graduate who writes cheesy greeting cards for a living. Tom has a big heart and falls hard and fast for the girls in his life. Based on his Brit Pop-filled formative years and a misreading of the messages in The Graduate, Tom has always dreamt of meeting “the one.” And he thinks he’s found her when Summer arrives at the office has his boss’s new assistant. Soon they go drinking, they karaoke, they bond over The Smiths and shouting awkward things in public spaces, they sleep together. Problem is, Summer tells Tom first that she isn’t looking for anything “serious.” He tells her that’s fine by him, but everyone in the audience can tell by his eyes that he’s hedging, so why can’t she?
During one late night, near-breakup, after Tom has punched out a cheeseball that hit on Summer, and she has told him they are “just friends,” he asks her for some modicum of consistency in her feelings for him. She calmly responds that she can’t give that to him. In fact, she says, no one can. She doesn’t know how she’ll feel about him in the morning, but that’s her problem. Her relationships are only measured by her feelings. Feelings that can change on whim. “You just do what you feel like, don’t you?” Tom tells her.
While we can rely on feelings to get you through the first flush, the “honeymoon” buzz of new affection, it takes a much more concerted effort, a choice, a vow to be sure you’re with “the one.” In reality, it takes commitment to be certain about anything, be it a new hire, a religious faith, or a breakfast cereal.
If Summer sounds cold, she’s not. But Summer is afraid of committing to Tom, who’s continuously caught between the preternaturally insightful advice from his grade school sister and the misogynist quips from his louche work buddy.
Penned by first-time writers Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, (500) Days of Summer makes good on a very funny and occasionally poignant film that avoids feeling like the Hindenberg on a collision course with the Titanic. Neustadter and Weber achieve this with a clever collage effect that looks at vignettes of Tom and Summer together out of order. It’s a bold script with definite Woody Allen and Michel Gondry-like flourishes courtesy of split-screens that show reality versus fantasy, voice-overs, a mid-movie dance sequence and even a hilarious Han Solo cameo.
Gordon-Levitt arrives as a leading man with this role that sees his heart swing from the zeniths to the gutters in no time flat, while Deschanel draws from the same well that overflowed in David Gordon Green’s brilliant 2003 relationship drama All the Real Girls. For all of its tender moments and frustrating arguments, (500) Days of Summer shows that “no-strings-attached” is realistically devastating: messy at best and soul crushing at worst. It’s a thought-provoking piece of pop filmmaking, and one that just might have you looking at the person you’re sharing an armrest with and asking yourself: “Why do I care about him/her?” and “What should my commitment really look like?”
