HK Neo Reviews: (500) Days of Summer

Rating: 9/10 (5 April 2010)

Coincidence or fate...
Years ago, I remember roaming across an old book shop, inside, there is an antique book titled: "We do not remember the time, but we remember the moments." 500 Days of Summer is exactly that. The movie plays like random moments of recollected memories. In essence, the timing of each event is totally irrelevant. They are simply memories of what we remembered happened. It is rare that a Hollywood romantic drama steer away from the cliché syndrome. It is a kind of movie that makes you love movies. In some stage of our lives, we will all probably have met someone like Summer. A type of girl that likes you, but you know will never be with you. Some call it fate, some call it lust, some call it coincidence, and I call it timing. It is a love story without all the elements of one. 500 Days of Summer succeeds in giving the audience a movie about something tangible, something understandable and something to ponder about.
The movie goes like this: A girl meets boy. Boy falls for girl. Girl likes the boy. The two goes closer. The boy wants a relationship. The girl wants something else. Life is wrecked and it's time to see how the boy deals with it in 500 days of summer...
What is so beautiful about this movie is that the director puts you directly into Tom's character shoes. It is lovely, bittersweet and knowing. Movies like these do not come along too often, but like a failed romantic encounter, it actually plays out like one. Beautiful yet bittersweet are the feelings involved. Whether you like it or not, one just has to learn to accept it. It reminds me of the time when I met a girl on the plane. From there we smashed all the right buttons. Then suddenly one day, the girl decides to pops up the words of wisdom in the lines of "I don't want a boyfriend". Sometime in life, you just have to realise that there will never be an answer to every question. We will just have learn from it, make yourself a better person, enjoy life a little more and just treasure those past beautiful memories and move on. I never asked why. I just walked away and never saw the girl again. It lasted two months.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom into a real character, someone we can all relate to. While his chemistry with Summer seems real enough, there is something about the two, that only the audience or a bystander will realise. They are clearly not compatible. Yet, Tom persists. Perhaps, Summer puts it perfectly by the end of the film: "With you, I just never knew." In essence, love is not meant to reason with or requires an explanation. The moment you are required to explain why and how and what, it becomes an excuse or thinking there is a reason. Summer played perfectly by Zooey Deschanel. Zooey may seem like she knows exactly what she wants. In reality, that is not the case. She is not the pretty type, but there is something about her attitude, the eyes and something about her that makes her a distant yet fascinating character.
All in all, (500) Days of Summer is not your norm Hollywood romance drama. It's like the same feeling as the moment you remember about the last time; you encounter a similar event or situation. It is sad that they don't make more movies like this. While not all romance are bitter. It goes back to a saying: "failures are what we learn from". So it goes back to the interpretation of love. The movie seems to say that there are no such things as miracle, meant to be or even fate. Love is all pure coincidence. Maybe in my view, it sounds a tad more optimistic, in the notion of timing. I once told a girl, "If you don't want to see me again, I will just walk away". Perhaps, like (500) days of Summer, it was just not meant to be...(Neo 2010)
I rate it 9/10

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