A Perfect Romantic Comedy for the Times

Rating: 9/10 (11 February 2016)

I have had a few failed relationships over the course of my life; who hasn't. Amidst the anger, remorse and bad poetry the expectation of true love always remains in shambles by the end. Yet if and when we stop feeling sorry for ourselves, we get back up, we dust ourselves off and we try again. It's a hard thing to do, be we feel compelled to do so maybe because of biology, perhaps hubris or perhaps something deeper. This is the complex web of emotions (500) Days of Summer tries and largely succeeds in capturing.
Through the voice of an omnipotent narrator we're introduced to Tom (Gordon-Levitt), a young man who grew up on a steady diet of sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie The Graduate (1967). He studied to be an architect but instead of taking a chance on a dream career he works at a greeting card company. It is there he meets Summer (Deschanel) an attractive young woman who shares his love for indie bands and other bizzaro crap; truly this must be love. Not so much however; within the first five minutes we are informed expressly (500) Days of Summer is not a love story. This may come as a surprise to Tom.
The movie skips around between the relationship's genesis, the honeymoon period and a possible disintegration. It's playful editing and hilarious moments of romantic realism immediately puts the audience in a trance. Through various call-backs, juxtapositions and cliché romantic comedy goofiness even the most cynical heart falls for Tom's unadulterated romanticism and Summer's quirk. Yet beneath that quirk is a cynicism we've seen before in a lot of other movies; she doesn't believe in true love and doesn't want anything too permanent so naturally we spend the entire movie waiting for her to change her mind. After all the first shot of the movie is Tom and Summer sitting on a park bench on a nice spring day, hands touching and a ring on her finger.
(500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy for the times. Occasionally silly, occasionally maudlin, the movie plays with expectations of those accustomed to genre clichés while quietly subverting them for a generation of skeptics and latch key kids. The movie insists that love isn't just boy meets girl, it's a complex set of emotions and circumstances that takes patience and understanding to master. Tom is our unwitting vessel to guide us through this rather harsh lesson and despite warning signs we're all oblivious to the true machinations of the film until the ending.
Yet the film isn't bitter or cynical towards the idea of love but rather cynical towards the tropes and clichés we're constantly being subjected to by popular media. In one poignant scene, Tom accuses the sentimentality behind love songs, movies, and the very cards his company makes for his relationship struggles. Though the constant callbacks to the final scene of The Graduate undercuts him a bit. Are his problems the fault of an expectation imposed on Tom or an expectation he misconstrued? What about our expectations? There seems to be a large faction of the internet that dislikes Deschanel's character because of her presumed haughtiness. And while the movie stumbles a bit in coloring in her characterization, Summer is ultimately exercising her own agency. You can't blame her for her actions when she make her intentions so clear.
What is abundantly clear is (500) Days of Summer is a fun, quirky, creatively inspired movie about what it means to fall in and out of love. The movie's script written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber is sharp, funny and most importantly observant and respectful of youth. We constantly forget that our understanding of love, two people getting to know each other without familial involvement, is relatively new. Popular media has had the opportunity to gestate the "girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her" idea since the start. Here's to hoping coming generations will be able to keep things less messy. If (500) Days of Summer is any indication, we're on the right track.