***Major Spoiler Warning***
500 Days Of Summer is a romantic-comedy that was released in 2009 starring actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel (who looks so much like Katy Perry that it’s unbelievable), Matthew Gray Gubler, and Chloe Grace Moretz. The film’s description relays the story as follows: “Tom, a greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer, suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.” That description couldn’t be further from the gravity and truth of this film. It is far more complex than that and delves deeper into the psyche of Tom and his expectations when it comes to love.
In the very first scene of the film, we get a narration of Tom’s life and his views on love. Like the description says, he is a hopeless romantic; he “believed he would never truly be happy until he found the one.” It’s worth mentioning that the narrator notes that Tom “had a profound misunderstanding of the movie “The Graduate” and we see this further manifest itself later in the film.”
In the following scene, Tom is seen smashing plates in his apartment clearly distraught, and, after some prying, his friends find out that his “girlfriend” Summer “broke up” with him. We get flashbacks of all that has transpired up until this point in little segments throughout the movie. The quotation marks have been used purposely, as the viewer will notice when watching the film.
We are transported to the first day Tom meets his “Summer.” He is at work in a meeting when he spots Summer, the boss’s new assistant. Almost immediately he starts romanticizing her before even getting to know her. Even the narrator says that Summer is very much average and has nothing special about her, yet Tom pines after her.
During a conversation, at a night out with people from the office, Tom learns that Summer doesn’t believe in love. This is a completely foreign concept to Tom, his beliefs about love are completely opposite to Summer’s. As we see throughout the film, it becomes his mission to prove to Summer that she can fall in love, more specifically, that she can fall in love with him.
He does succeed at first. He and Summer begin a situationship. A situationship is a romantic relationship that's undefined or uncommitted. Summer makes it clear that she is not looking for a relationship and doesn't want anything serious, because, again, she doesn’t believe in love. Tom overlooks this crucial sign and proceeds anyway. He virtually sets himself up for failure thinking that he could somehow change her. Throughout the course of their situationship you can genuinely see Tom falling in love with Summer; he paints her as larger than life and he wholeheartedly believes that she is the only person who can make him happy. He builds his whole world around his relationship with Summer. This is the very reason why he is completely heartbroken and thrown off course when Summer says that they are “just friends.” In his mind he thinks to himself “how could ‘just friends’ be so intimate with each other?”
A scene that really stands out is one when they first begin their situationship, Summer invites him over to her apartment and she tells him her deepest fears and her dreams. Instead of taking in and actually listening to what she’s saying, he tunes her out and thinks to himself how much she must love him for her to want to tell him something so personal. This describes the magnitude of their situationship. Summer views it as purely casual but Tom on the other hand is head over heels, and because Tom lives in such an illusion he is unable to see the tell tale signs that Summer really does not love him to the extent that he loves her.
Summer eventually breaks up with him and we see Tom in a slump again. Without Summer his whole world stops. He becomes a shell of who he once was and becomes reclusive. On the other side, we learn that Summer is doing just fine and has even gotten married. This shocking revelation expands Tom’s mind as we see him reflect back on his time spent with Summer, trying to piece together what went wrong. It is then he realizes that Summer never truly loved him, all the moments they shared together were shallow and really insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Summer found love, it just wasn’t with him.
At the end of the film, now knowing that Summer has moved on, we see Tom finally move on and begin focusing on himself. He even pursues a career of being an architect: something he has always wanted to do. In the last scene we see him at a job interview. He sees this woman who catches his eye. They spark up a conversation and she tells him that she has seen him before, Tom remarks by saying “How come I’ve never seen you?”and she replies back saying “You probably weren’t looking.” This piece of dialogue alludes to just how blinded Tom really was when he was involved with Summer. Later on we see him gather up the courage to ask the mystery girl out, and she says “Yes.” In the last scene we see them finally introducing themselves to each other. Ironically, the mystery girl’s name is Autumn.
All in all I think it was a great film and I loved the ending. I believe that the film carries a strong message: do not fall in love with the idea of someone and rather the person themselves. I feel like nowadays, a lot of people ignore this message, but doing that is quite destructive. When you romanticize someone before you even get to know them, you are only setting yourself up to be hurt when people are not who you imagine them to be. So don’t get so engulfed in someone else that you lose sight of everything and everyone else around you. You wouldn’t want to miss out on an opportunity because you weren’t paying attention.
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