(500) Days of Summer: 2009

Tom and Summer: as charming as it gets.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Especially you Jenny Beckman.

Bitch.

So opens “(500) Days of Summer,” one of the most bitter lovesick comedy-dramas I’ve ever seen. Directed by Marc Webb and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the film is somewhat of a gem for its (un)chronologic originality and take of romance and heart break.

Tom Hanson (Gordon-Levitt) is a miserable mess. Breaking one ceramic dish after another, he is reconciled by his much younger sister Rachel, to whom he recaps his inevitable break-up with the love of his life Summer Finn (Deschanel), the one woman he believed to be his one key to happiness.

From here on, everything is a series of flashbacks and flash forwards, with scenes pitted against one another in irony and comedic timing. To Summer’s angelic entrance to Tom’s gustling bouts of vigor and zeal, the movie is a bustling bundle of bliss and blunder, thrills and trepidations. Most importantly, this is a story about how Tom comes to terms with a woman who likes him but will never truly love him.

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have created two of the most likable-unlikable characters I’ve ever seen. Upon closer revelation I realized that Tom and Summer are, indeed, very much flawed: Tom is a lovesick puppy who acts on emotion and never quite grasps who Summer truly is; Summer is a aloof individual who acts on impulse and never quite lets Tom – or the audience even – in on who she truly feels. Such is the fault of both characters, and depending on where you’re coming from you may feel more empathy for one character than the other.

But I’m not here to argue who is more to blame, nor to point a finger of contempt at one or the other. I will, however, infer that the character Tom is a narrative function of the screenwriter(s) residual feelings, for there is not one scene where we actually get a real glimpse of the real Summer Finn. Maybe that’s just the point though – we’re watching a story through Tom’s eyes, not Summer’s. By day 500, we are just as perplexed by Summer’s seemingly airy approaches because we are never given a chance to see past the signs of her indignation with Tom.

Some may complain of the anachronistic approach director Marc Webb chooses to present “(500) Days of Summer.” I wholeheartedly embrace this approach: it is fun and fresh, the same approach Kurt Vonnegut chose in writing Slaughterhouse-Five, and it tickles our minds into piecing together the fragments of memories into one cohesive chain.

There are whimsical elements that remind the television series “Pushing Daisies,” accomplished much in thanks to a upbeat soundtrack, imaginative editing from Alan Edward Bell, and creative cinematography from Eric Steelberg. The acting is, of course, topnotch from Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt, with whom the story could not function without otherwise.

“(500) Days of Summer” is far from a low-budget film, especially since there are so many elements that suggest otherwise (a full-blown musical number and nifty use of graphics come to mind). It is, however, a film full of double folds and double meanings – in the sense, the essence of a true relationship.

This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story.

Indeed, this is probably the most charmingly morose movie you will ever come across.

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