(500) Days of Summer
This is a story of boy meets girl, begins the wry, probing narrator of 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, and with that the film takes off at breakneck speed into a funny, true to life and unique dissection of the unruly and unpredictable year-and-a-half of one young man's no-holds-barred love affair.
This is a very unique story about love, but it ain't, by all means, a love story. Every man felt or will be feeling this feeling once in their lives, including me - pain, torn, misery and the constant questioning of "why did she do this to me?". And wouldn't this be a great vehicle for a wonderful love story?
Told in a typical movie-hipster fashion, the film literally goes through the 500 days of Tom and Summer's relationship as the narrative shuffles and pick randomly certain days of the film's storytelling, starting at day 290 (halfway) at the point their break-up. Cleverly the title cards compares the first and the second halves of the times things are great and thing not so great, giving out handy hints about the flaws of their relationship.
You gotta give credit for the movie to have the audience give a damn about the main characters, even if its gonna divide up the genders. Whether the girls view Joseph's character, Tom as an immature and emo baby or the guys (mostly) view Summer as an robotic, shallow, distant, heartless... woman. Even if the narrative is actually controlled by Tom and is viewed in his perspective, it would be nice if we see a little of Summer so we could understand more of her. I don't know if that was the intention of the filmmaker to make her mysterious or a cold-hearted... girl. But we clearly see a great character development of Tom as he journeys through the rough time and becoming a much better person. For Summer, I'm not so sure. Joseph Gordon-Levitt keeps reminding us he's the hottest new rising star in the film industry now as he is becoming more comfortable in mature roles. Zooey Deschanel is also great as the enigmatic and quirky Summer.
The music are composed of many indie and hipster tracks and the film is shot like one too. And I have to praise the film for creating and satirizing film sequences, from the musical dance sequence to the absurd French New Wave. It is a film not best to watch with your date, but appropriate to watch after a break up.
4 and a half out of 5 stars
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