Taglines: It was almost like falling in love.
(500) Days of Summer is a story of boy meets girl, begins the wry, probing narrator, 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.
Tom, the boy, still believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer, the girl, doesn’t. Not at all. But that doesn’t stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman – not that he minds any of that — but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world.
The fuse is lit on Day 1 – when Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a would-be architect turned sappy greeting card writer encounters Summer (Zooey Deschanel), his boss’s breezy, beautiful new secretary, fresh off the plane from Michigan. Though seemingly out of his league, Tom soon discovers he shares plenty in common with Summer. After all, they both love The Smiths. They both have a thing for the surrealist artist Magritte.
By Day 31, things are moving ahead, albeit “casually.” By Day 32, Tom is irreparably smitten, living in a giddy, fantastical world of Summer on his mind. By Day 185, things are in serious limbo — but not without hope. And as the story winds backwards and forwards through Tom and Summer’s on-again, off-again, sometimes blissful, often tumultuous dalliance it covers the whole dizzying territory from infatuation, dating and sex to separation, recrimination and redemption in a whirl of time jumps, split screens, karaoke numbers and cinematic verve – all of which adds up to a kaleidoscopic portrait of why, and how, we still struggle so laughably, cringingly hard to make sense of love… and to hopefully make it real.
And Now for a Comment From Director Marc Webb
Before I read 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, I’d completely lost interest in the romantic comedy genre. Somewhere between puberty and when I started paying taxes, I stopped believing in the world these rosy cheeked girls in cute winter knit caps kept promising me. What did it have to do with me?
When I sat down to read the Xeroxed pages that had already been dog-eared from about three weeks of neglect in my backpack I wasn’t really looking forward to it. It was the title that finally got me. Needless to say, something clicked. The writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber — without descending into some oddball high concept –conjured up a relationship that felt both artful and truthful. Metaphorical and literal.
We all know Summer because Summer isn’t just a girl. She’s an event. I met my first Summer when I was 17. She got me to skip class so she could read me Catcher in the Rye at the Vilas Park Zoo back in Madison, Wisconsin. (How cool is that?) At the time, I believed that love was the magic pill that would connect my soul to the universe and provide unending, effortless bliss.
I won’t go into the sordid details but suffice it to say pretty girls with rebel hearts are in high demand. Some people end up with their Summer. I did not. We broke up and I entered into this weird limbo – I couldn’t shake that feeling that something had gone horribly, painfully wrong with the universe. The reality I expected and the reality I experienced were suddenly very different. The ironic thing is – the one thing that made me feel alone is probably the very thing that so many people from different walks of life can connect to: we all know heartbreak. Whether we’re 17 or 70.
In many ways, making this movie – my first feature film – has been the happy ending that I didn’t have with Summer. It’s got a whiff of the uncynical kid from the Vilas Park Zoo in it. Because under the humor and the whimsy of 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, there’s a fundamental truth at play: yes, love can be cruel, harsh and difficult but it’s also, by far, the best thing life has to offer.
Before I read 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, I’d completely lost interest in the romantic comedy genre. Somewhere between puberty and when I started paying taxes, I stopped believing in the world these rosy cheeked girls in cute winter knit caps kept promising me. What did it have to do with me?
When I sat down to read the Xeroxed pages that had already been dog-eared from about three weeks of neglect in my backpack I wasn’t really looking forward to it. It was the title that finally got me. Needless to say, something clicked. The writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber — without descending into some oddball high concept –conjured up a relationship that felt both artful and truthful. Metaphorical and literal.
We all know Summer because Summer isn’t just a girl. She’s an event. I met my first Summer when I was 17. She got me to skip class so she could read me Catcher in the Rye at the Vilas Park Zoo back in Madison, Wisconsin. (How cool is that?) At the time, I believed that love was the magic pill that would connect my soul to the universe and provide unending, effortless bliss.
I won’t go into the sordid details but suffice it to say pretty girls with rebel hearts are in high demand. Some people end up with their Summer. I did not. We broke up and I entered into this weird limbo – I couldn’t shake that feeling that something had gone horribly, painfully wrong with the universe. The reality I expected and the reality I experienced were suddenly very different. The ironic thing is – the one thing that made me feel alone is probably the very thing that so many people from different walks of life can connect to: we all know heartbreak. Whether we’re 17 or 70.
In many ways, making this movie – my first feature film – has been the happy ending that I didn’t have with Summer. It’s got a whiff of the uncynical kid from the Vilas Park Zoo in it. Because under the humor and the whimsy of 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, there’s a fundamental truth at play: yes, love can be cruel, harsh and difficult but it’s also, by far, the best thing life has to offer.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Directed by: Marc Webb
Starring: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend, Chloë Grace Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Ian Reed Kesler
Screenplay by: Scott Neustadter, Michael Weber
Production Design by: Laura Fox
Cinematography by: Eric Steelberg
Film Editing by: Alan Edward Bell
Costume Design by: Hope Hanafin
Set Decoration by: Jennifer Lukehart
Art Direction by: Charles Varga
Music by: Mychael Danna, Rob Simonsen
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual material and language.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: July 17, 2009
Views: 152
