500 Days is the surprise hit of the Summer...

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2010)

(500) Days of Summer is one of the best films of the year so far, let's get that out of the way up front. It's a movie that is real about romance, but not overtly cynical or anything like that. What first time feature director Marc Webb has done is create (with the help of a nomination worthy original screenplay by scribes Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber) a portrait of how one man sees his relationship with a girl named Summer. This is both a life affirming and heart breaking movie, and it's rare that those are one and the same. Combine that with subtle yet free flowing direction, great acting, and the best soundtrack of the year so far, and what we have here is a real winner.
The movie details essentially the 500 days that Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) knows Summer (Zooey Deschanel). This includes much more than just the standard meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after aspects that most traditional boy meets girl movies entail. This has far more going on than that. For one, Tom and Summer don't end up together (this isn't a spoiler, so no worries). The film is presented with a fractured narrative that skips around and is told solely from Tom's perspective, so the unreliable narrator technique is in effect as well. The movie is almost a post mortem on a relationship that, at least in Tom's eyes, was love at first sight.
First and foremost, this movie succeeds because of the two lead performances. Both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are doing some of the finest work of their careers and they make their characters people we know (and perhaps even are). Gordon-Levitt plays Tom as a modern day hopeless romantic, well aware of the silliness of believing in storybook romances, but he does anyway. He also has to display the full gamut of emotions, as he has to play Tom as longing for Summer, being overjoyed at being with Summer, loving Summer, hating Summer, missing Summer, and so on. It's a tough role that he hits a home run with. Deschanel is just as good with an even harder role. She's not so much playing a character as she inhabits Tom's current view of this thing we know of as Summer. On rare occasions we might be seeing hints at the "real Summer", but for the most part she's portraying what he currently thinks of her. Both actors are always good, but here, they're both fantastic and essay memorable roles that are worthy of being remembered come awards time.
Director Webb is playful with his movie, but never loses control. He knows exactly the movie he wants to make (a mix of such diverse films as Juno, Annie Hall, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, High Fidelity, Manhattan, Garden State, and The Graduate) and never hits a wrong note. Even the things that could normally be a detractor in a "quirky" movie like this, such as dream sequences, song and dance, animation, weird friends, a second narrator who pops in here and there and is not a character in the film otherwise, a little girl wise beyond her years, and split-screen are handled perfectly, so the movie is instead better for their presence. It really is a perfect match of director and script.
By being somewhat of a scrapbook about the 500 days that Tom interacts with Summer, the film presents itself as a series of memories about Summer from Tom's point of view. We are never sure if everything is the exact truth (on more than one occasion, we may or may not be seeing what really happens), and that creates an interesting feeling while viewing the flick. The movie wants to be about the moments in between what most generic films show to audiences, and it's a complete success at doing so. It's almost as if we're with Tom as he recounts this to us, his memory skewed by personal history and his current mood. It all sounds more complicated then it is, but it's this type of creativity and uniqueness that makes (500) Days of Summer the brilliant experience that it is.
What I love about this movie so much is that it's realistic about relationships and the crapshoot nature that they tend to be. Men and women may view this movie very differently since it's from Tom's perspective, but everyone will no doubt see a bit of themselves in this movie. Whether you've been jilted in love, are happily in love, miss the one that got away, or none of the above, the film will speak to you in some small way. (500) Days of Summer will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you smile, and it will make you think. Most of all it will make you appreciate the fine work of cinema that it is. The movie is an Oscar dark horse, so keep an eye out for it, but take it from me, this is a masterpiece that you will no doubt treasure and remember as one of the finest films of 2009.