(500) Days of Summer Review

Before I launch into this, I wanted to let you all know that I will be out of town for the next few days, so the blog may end up resting for a bit. Hopefully, Deidre will be able to get us some words, and I have a couple half-written columns that I may or may not have time to finish and upload. We'll see. For now, enjoy...



There used to be a time when the word “indie” referred to the process by which a film was made – that is, low budget adaptations that contrasted the Hollywood establishment. Such films featured shaky handheld cameras instead of tripods, B-level celebrities instead of stars, dim lighting instead of the bright Hollywood illumination. In that sense, (500) Days of Summer is a bit of an oddity – a film that uses fixed shots, A-list actors, and bright lights, but that somehow still manages to ooze indie vibe throughout.

One can’t deny that indies have evolved heavily in the last decade or so. Where once the genre was typified by movies like the family drama Pieces of April, tonally sullen but with a strong emphasis on storytelling and realism, now, it is possibly better represented by Juno, or Chumscrubber, brighter films where conceptualism often trumps the narrative.

Don’t be alarmed, though, if (like me) these “Hollywood Indies” (trademark) are generally not for you. (500) Days of Summer may display many tropes of the genre, but it is able to avoid falling into the field altogether because of the unflinching truthfulness of the story.


(500) tells the chronologically shuffled tale of Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a passionate greeting card writer who falls hard for his new coworker Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel).

- Indie trope #1 – the quirky yet thematically significant job title. See also: Garden State’s armor-clad lad who works as a knight at a local Renaissance fair.

After a few weeks of drooling over her, Tom finally gets close to Summer at an office party. Though he tries (as so many of us do) to play it cool, hiding his feelings so as not to appear too desperate, Summer can see through the charade and instigates a romance.

But there’s a catch: A perfect incarnate of the free-spirited modern day Flapper, Summer refuses to label the relationship, much to the chagrin of Tom’s inner romantic. It’s clear that the relationship will operate according to her rules, and falling in love does not seem to be a realistic possibility.

As I said earlier, the story is chronologically shuffled, but a ticker identifying which number day (out of the 500) we are in makes it easy to understand. And, as in a similar movie about relationships, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, juxtaposing the different phases the couple goes through (the beginning as well as the end, the good times as well as the bad) allows the viewer to really feel close to the protagonists, understanding how the couple functions for better and for worse.

Though he has clearly been told that they are not boyfriend and girlfriend, Tom falls hard for Summer almost in spite of himself. Just how hard he falls is made clear by some non-realistic sequences…

- Indie Trope #2 – Throughout the movie, surreal sequences give us an insight to the main character’s feelings. A song breaks out after the couple’s first hook-up; on a bus, everybody looks exactly like Summer because he can’t stop thinking about her. Compare this to, say, the rose petal sequences in American Beauty (admittedly not an indie, but a movie most people are familiar with), or, say, Chumscrubber, where a woman screams silently to herself so that you, the viewer, know that she is in pain.



Perhaps sensing that Tom is starting to feel too close to her, Summer ends the relationship, throwing Tom into a funk so acute that he cannot even find a positive phrase to write on a greeting card (resulting in his demotion to the bereavements department). While the rest of the movie follows Tom trying to get Summer back, an unexpected (and, perhaps, out-of-character) twist complicates any attempt at a further relationship.

- Indie Trope #3 - the girl’s name is Summer, so we in the audience know that she exists as both a character and a concept. This allows for the characters’ actions to have a deeper meaning (i.e. Tom has to “get Summer back”… get it?). Sort of like naming the protagonist John Everyman -

But for all the indie-tastic distractions of (500), the story itself is poignant and truthful, perhaps one of the best depictions of the modern-day relationship that I’ve ever seen. Unlike many of today’s romantic comedies, it eschews the steady progression of relationship milestones leading up to the altar (first kiss, first intimacy, buildup of trust, survival of a challenge, and… voila! Marriage!), showing that truthfully, coupling is messy, organic, and subjective. What looks like love to one person may feel like suffocation to another.

Most importantly, though, relationships are often about finding oneself. For instance, it is only after Summer breaks off relations with Tom that he is able to rediscover his love for architecture, growing in a way that could have never happened without both the relationship and the heartbreak. Summer grows from the relationship as well, perhaps even more radically than Tom.

Don’t expect to glean a clear message from (500) Days of Summer, but you can anticipate finding numerous nuggets of wisdom in this smart, funny, and honest look at love in Generation Y. As in life, meaning comes only in small bites of truth taken one-at-a-time, rather than a meal eaten all at once. As Tom and Summer show, it’s these small bites that slowly feed our sense of purpose and allow us to develop.