True Life Love Story

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2012)

I only recently saw this film, after hearing for three years that it was brilliant. I therefore expected it to fall short of my expectations, but I was incredibly, pleasantly surprised: (500) Days of Summer is, in fact, brilliant.
The focus of this movie is love, one of the most prevalent themes in cinema, yet it is approached unconventionally here. This is no vapid romcom, no Nicholas Sparks-esque tear trigger, not even a tragedy reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet; rather, it is a study of how people feel and form relationships in the real world, and is therefore emotionally resonant on a level that most films don't reach.
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a hopeless romantic, ready to fall head-over-heels in love, yet Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the girl he decides is the love of his life, entertains no such fantasies, and is fundamentally opposed to relationships in general. Though they are apparently ill-fitted for one another, their lives intertwine over these 500 days, and they find themselves becoming... something. Something fuzzy and indistinct, something that looks different from each of their perspectives, something between friends and true lovers in sync with one another.
Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel both deliver perfect performances. Tom is heartrendingly naive, experiencing true misery for the first time as he comes to realize that his view of the world has been wrong for too long, and Summer is not a caricature. It is evident that she feels just as much as Tom, albeit differently, and she is honest with him and herself right from the beginning. Neither character is entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong - they are real people coming face to face with the real questions of what love is and what it should be and how it is interpreted by different people.
Though I really enjoy the story itself, the method of its telling adds significantly to its merit as a creative work. Elements of the story's setting and setup - they meet in a greeting card factory, Tom's teenage sister is the voice of reason on which he depends - establish the movie's quirkiness. Directorial and narrative decisions also add interest: there is an outer layer to the story (a narrator, decorative title cards that reflect the mood at the point in the story they reference, the fourth wall gets close to being broken); it is told out of order (hence the need for title cards establishing chronology); events and internal monologues are displayed creatively (split screens, scenes from foreign films). The ending - without giving anything away - is fabulous.
(500) Days of Summer is my favorite kind of movie. It doesn't present a message heavy-handedly but does make you think, features great actors, and breaks Hollywood conventions. I would definitely recommend it.