Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/18/09
There's a good reason why
movie characters spend so much time running, shooting, falling in love
and generally doing stuff: sadness, despair, and all things introverted
are hard things to put on screen. It's hard to get an actor who can
seem like more than an unlikable mope while doing them, and when the characters
onscreen are doing nothing but standing still, the full burden of generating
the movie's energy shifts behind the camera. No worries: (500)
Days of Summer relishes the challenge, turning in the most complete
and heartfelt cinematic portrait of heartbreak I've ever seen. Credit
a tremendous performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role and the
invention of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber on the page and Marc
Webb behind the camera. Funny, bittersweet, and instantly relatable
to anyone who's ever watched a dream of happiness fade before their eyes,
(500) Days of Summer is that rare movie that really seems to know
what's going on inside our heads when we think no one's paying attention.
In more-or-less random order,
we visit some of the 500 days during the relationship of greeting card
writer Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his boss's assistant Summer
Finn (Zooey Deschanel). As a Narrator (an uncredited Richard McGonagle)
informs us, Tom believes in love. In fact, he believes that he will
never be happy until he meets The One. Sadly for him, he decides
that One is Summer, who emphatically believes there's no such thing.
She wants to be friends, then friends with benefits, but while Tom tells
himself they don't need to give their relationship a name, what he really
doesn't want to do is hear her say he's NOT her boyfriend. Friends
McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) and Paul (Matthew Gay Gubler) and his little
sister Rachel (Chloe Moretz) know the status quo can never hold, and so
do we: we've already seen them break up around Day 300. But
Tom clings to the belief that he can win Summer back, even as that hope
becomes more and more remote and he finds himself in a downward spiral
that does not go well with a job selling pat sentiments of true love.
(500) Days of Summer
doesn't completely discount the possibility of true love, but it is far
more certain of a cold, hard truth: people spend an awful lot of
time finding out they were wrong about true love with a particular person.
Even without the benefit of the film's sliding time scale, we can just
feel that things aren't meant to be between these two. Deschanel
is as delightful as ever, but probably by design doesn't sell for a moment
Tom's belief that this is a girl he can have a future with. Webb
uses the out-of-order structure skillfully to show us some events more
than once, with and without the blinders Tom's feelings put on him:
Summer has a way of trailing off, looking down, showing through her body
language that this is just an interlude for her, one she'll soon be looking
for a way out of. Doing things out of order also allows Neustadter
and Weber to cluster similar events and also pair ironic ones, like the
day when Tom's so happy he sees the world as one big musical number and
another when the entire world around him simply turns grey.
The movie never seems to
run out of ideas to put thoughts and emotions on screen. My personal
favorite is an absolute heartbreaker: having received a post-breakup
invitation to a party Summer's holding, Tom happily heads there armed with
a gift and a very strong idea of what will happen. And we watch,
on a split-screen, while that expectation plays out side-by-side with bitter
reality. The Narrator also fills in some helpful info, like some
remarkable statistics on just how much company Tom has in feeling love
at first sight for Summer Finn.
What allows the movie room
to be serious and profound is how funny it is, and it's VERY funny.
The early happy moments between Tom and Summer are skillfully played:
it's important that he be a fun guy to be around, since for her that's
all he ever is. The greeting card company emerges as a fun, original
workplace and Clark Gregg is a hoot as their boss, always ready to make
lemonade out of the ups and downs of their relationship and believing VERY
strongly in their bromide-penning calling. Arend and Gubler make
cool friends, and Moretz is hilarious as a little kid who could run circles
around Dr. Phil. You know those kids today, they certainly grow up
fast!
But most important is Gordon-Levitt,
who hits all the notes on Tom's emotional journey just right. He
makes it easy to fall for Summer through his eyes, then to feel the mounting
frustration as the relationship just doesn't go the way he'd hoped.
But his best stuff is after the breakup, when he wears on his every expression
and gesture the self-absorbed bitterness that is the very essence of being
the breakupee, while spinning it all just the right way to make it hilarious
rather than depressing. I especially enjoyed the scenes where his
escalating bitterness contrasts the happy happy world of greeting cards,
culminating in a breakdown that's actually rather touching. I should
also point out an excellent performance by Minka Kelly in a small but pivotal
role.
Whether you're like Tom Hanson
or Summer Finn, whether you do or don't believe in love, (500) Days
of Summer will give you food for thought and more than a few sympathetic
laughs. For the optimists, it reminds that in a world full of people,
there's always someone else with whom to give it another try. For
the pessimists, well, it does kinda end with exactly the same device as
The Hurt Locker. |
