CineVegas Review: ‘(500) Days of Summer’

How do you remember a past love?  Chances are, it’s not in a linear fashion.  The whole “boy meets girl – boy falls for girl – boy loses girl” storyline works in that order only in typical love stories.  True love is remembered in fits and starts.  Sometimes you remember a fight.  Other times you remember the happier moments.  Still other times you go all the way back to the beginning and remember how the two of you first met.

With ‘(500) Days of Summer,’ writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber and director Marc Webb have pieced together one of the most magical and genuine love stories of the modern era.  It moves around within those 500 days that Zooey Deschanel’s Summer is in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom’s life.  It doesn’t start with them meeting.  We start somewhere in the middle, in one of the more melancholy moments of the relationship.  Slowly, we work back and forth, eventually hitting all the major highs and lows of the relationship finally culminating on the events of that 500th day.

But, the structure is not the only place where ‘(500) Days of Summer’ pulls out the originality.  Were this film told in a completely straight-forward narrative, it still would be head and shoulders above most other romance films.  For one, there is nothing predictable about ‘(500) Days of Summer.’  You truly do not know where it is headed.  You may think you know what is going on, and, honestly, that bit of cinema-going arrogance soured me on the film a little around the middle.  However, by the end, the film reached out, slapped me around and said, “No, I refuse to be just another love story.  You do NOT have any clue where I am headed.”

The acting is unmatched.  Gordon-Levitt is one of the best actors working today, and Deschanel is only a role or two away from taking the same crown on the actress’ side.  These two play their parts with absolute honesty, never once faltering.  Gordon-Levitt’s Tom is a hopeless romantic, always seeking out the next bit of love in his life.  Deschanel’s Summer doesn’t believe in love, and it is unclear for most of the film where she sees her relationship with Tom.

In more amateurish hands, this idea might have gone the way of so many quirky comedies that are fun on first viewing but then simmer out after losing the Best Picture Oscar to something more dramatic.  Yes, I’m talking to you ‘Juno’ and ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’   In even less capable hands, it could have fallen into the saccharine stylings that a majority of romantic comedies stumble over.

However, with ‘(500) Days of Summer,’ you just feel that everything that is transpiring before your eyes is going to stick with you long after you leave the theater.  Every aspect of this film works towards its inevitable state of perfection, not the least of which is Webb’s direction.

This is Webb’s first feature film.  Up until now he has directed a number of music videos and one short film.  He shoots this film as if he has been directing motion pictures for decades.  Every shot in ‘(500) Days of Summer’ is a stunningly beautiful picture.  Every camera movement and edit in the film serves to elicit the emotion coming out of the film’s main character.

Even a few segments within the film where Webb shows us the character’s mindset a bit more stylistically than the rest work perfectly.  There is a dance sequence early on, right after Tom and Summer have spent their first night together.  It is Gordon-Levitt dancing down the street as the whole world seems to take on the blue shade of Deschanel’s eyes.  It is pure movie magic, and it even finds little moments here and there to throw in some hilarious surprises.

Another segment features a split-screen.  The less said about the narrative surrounding this scene the better.  I will just say that certain aspects of what was going on story-wise were lost on me, because I found myself wide-eyed and open-mouthed at how brilliantly crafted the scene was.  That is not to say in the least that what is happening in the story is the slightest bit uninteresting.  Far from it.  The nature of the scene, though, and the way it is so masterfully written and put together is breathtaking.

There is another element to ‘(500) Days of Summer’ that puts the film in a class far above most other films.  The people behind it are not afraid to set their own rules and then break them.  Each scene begins with the numbers 1 – 500 spinning and landing on one, particular number.  It is that day the scene takes place on.  At certain points, though, we don’t get a particular or whole number.  At one point, we get a number and 1/2.  At another point, we get a range of numbers followed by a montage of Tom’s day-to-day routine during that span of time.  This idea of setting your own rules and then having absolutely no fear of breaking them is what makes master craftsmen of filmmakers and the writers and director here take that idea and run with it wholeheartedly.

‘(500) Days of Summer’ is more than just a better-than-average offbeat romantic comedy.  It is a truly amazing and poetic look at the honesty of love and what comes after.  Whether you are someone who has love and lost or someone who has finally found your one, true love, you will know the veracity of the story told in ‘(500) Days of Summer.’  The film is truly amazing, truly the best crafted and most sincere love story put to film in a long time.