500 Days of Summer

YEAH!!!! 50 REVIEWS AND COUNTING!!!!!

“This is a story about boy meets girl. But this is not a love story”. 500 Days of Summer starts with this claim. But when your cast includes the boy faced Joseph Gordon Levitt and the even more sweet looking Zooey Deschanel, that’s a tall claim to make. Nevertheless, around 90 minutes later, one has no other choice but to agree with this claim. 500 Days of Summer is definitely not your run of the mill love story. In fact it isn’t a love story.

Tom Hansen (JG Levitt) is a greeting card writer. He is a qualified architect. But it doesn’t quite work out and now he finds himself writing cards. His life revolves around his 2 best friends, McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) and Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler). And his little but not so little sister Rachel (Chloe Moretz). He believes that there is “The One” for every person in the world. He is your regular Romeo in search for his Juliet. Summer Finn (Zoey Deschanel) – yes the movie isn’t about the season – joins the organization as an assistant to Vance (Clark Gregg). Tom is instantly smitten. But he is too scared to make any moves. But he does manage to make some small conversation. First when Summer tells him about her love for the band “Smiths” and then at a small office get together.

Things however start building up only when they get together at a Karaoke session where they have their first real conversation. Turns out Summer is not one to believe in “Love”. What does it mean anyways. Life is too short. Best have as much fun and not get into any sort of commitments. “I don’t want to be known as anybody’s somebody” is the motto that she lives by. But there’s something about Tom that she finds attractive. She is not able to put a finger on it but one thing leads to another and the 2 just hit it off. But at no point of time does she want to solidify the relationship by taking it to the next level. She just wants to be best friends – with benefits of course. However, she does go on behaving like a girl friend would.

500 days of Summer is made in a non-chronological fashion. A method of movie making which one Quentin Tarantino is a complete expert. But director Marc Webb does full justice to the style of movie making. There is very little use of music. Webb has made great use of the term “pregnant pauses” and also flirts with being an arty kind of movie as well. The movies deals with a topic that is not been explored too often – in fact I cannot quite remember any movie that has dealt with the pain of a break up. The process of healing after you have been hit really hard squarely on the face with the fact that all the effort has come to naught. The pain of playing back every little scene in an “endless loop” just to figure out if there is a little moment that you missed out. All this in a relationship that you have put everything you had into and left no stone unturned whatsoever.

Joseph Gordon Levitt has for the better part of his life been associated with teeny bopper movies. But of late, I must say, he has come of age. With Inception and 500 days of Summer, he has probably taken a step in the right direction of maximizing his potential. Zooey Deschanel is one of the prettiest (not gorgeous – pretty) faces you can see in Hollywood. Totally girl next door. And quite a decent actress. In her role of Summer Finn I think she was very good to say the least. She looked most comfortable as a mid twenties girl who is comfortable without giving a relationship any status or name. Not the happiest of movies to watch but a very different topic. Peppered with decent performances from the support cast. Definitely worth a dekko. 6 on 10.