“(500) Days of Summer” is one of the strangest love stories that I’ve seen in quite awhile. But then I realize that the film is right in saying that it is not a love story, it is a story about love, and a fragmented one at that. We jump back and forth, witnessing the good days and the bad, looking with our hero to see where things could have possibly gone wrong. What we end up with is an analysis of love, fate, destiny, and coincidence. So to be more precise, it’s not your average story about love.
Starting late in the relationship, Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer’s (Zooey Deschanel) relationship is not going well, with the feeling that it is going to end very soon. We then flash back to show how Tom and Summer met. He is writing for a greeting card company when he meets Summer, his boss’s new assistant. He immediately has a crush on her and practically obsesses over her, but she doesn’t seem all that interested, that is until one night, when his feelings are revealed by his friend, McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend). From there, a strange relationship begins that will span up to that 500th day that the title promises where we know things must end.
This is a fascinating relationship to watch from the start. Near the beginning of their relationship, Summer tells Tom that she isn’t looking for anything serious and doesn’t want to put a label (i.e. boyfriend and girlfriend) on it. She really just wants to be friends, but always seems like she wants much more.
Tom is madly in love with her and wants to call themselves a couple. He is confused as to the status of their relationship, and who wouldn’t be? She makes an advance on him in the Xerox room, kisses him constantly, and even makes love to him. What kind of relationship would you call that? For Summer, this is called merely being friends.
On the advice of his sister, Rachel (Chloe Moretz), Tom looks back over all the times that he and Summer have had together, including both the good and the bad. He remembers important days in the relationship including their first kiss, defending her at a bar, casual conversations, holding hands at IKEA, and, of course, their slow drift apart.
Love is constantly brought up in their relationship. He clearly loves her, but she doesn’t love him, nor does she even believe in love as we find out during one of their conversations early on. He respectfully disagrees. He believes love is something you know when you feel it. There is also talk of things that are meant to be, or not meant to be. By the end of the film, and the relationship, these characters will end up questioning their own opinions on these matters.
Joseph Goren-Levitt shows just how far he has come since “3rd Rock from the Sun” with his great performance in this film. I would even call it the best of his career (We’ll just forget that he was in “G.I. Joe” and move on). He is absolutely convincing in this performance, showing just the right touch of anguish when things aren’t going well, but also the right touch of happiness when things are looking up, despite how confusing his relationship is with Summer.
Zooey Deschanel’s performance also deserves to be noted. She plays Summer as a very complex woman, not something that any actress could do considering the kind of mixed signals that her character gives throughout the film. Her character’s big choice near the end of the film felt a little strange, but it probably came from her experience with Tom and her exploration of the topics that they bring up in conversation.
At times, “(500) Days” does feel choppy and disjointed, but that’s to be expected from a film that jumps back and forth through time constantly to reveal significant moments of a relationship. There are times when you want to see more of a scene, but the film jumps to another moment. But another topic brought up in the film is memory, and how most days don’t really leave an impact on it or our lives. What “(500) Days” leaves us with are those moments that meant something in a relationship that meant everything and nothing.
3.5/4 stars.