(500) Days of Summer

An offbeat romantic comedy about a woman who doesn't believe true love exists, and the young man who falls for her.

Director: Marc Webb

Writers: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber

Stars: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend

Due to the movie slogan; “This is not a love story, this is a story about love”, I was immediately interested in this movie and saw it. As a result, (500) Days of Summer has become one of my best film in my mind because of the strange new aspects on the simplicity of the movie.

This film has a simple content but it can make a story differ from other love story. (500) Days of Summer does not only focus on love or a relationship between boy and girl but also human’s habit and behavior.

The movie presents a concept of the truth about life that is uncertainty. For example, Summer, a main character in the movie, always surprises me while watching because she quickly changes her mind all the story so it makes the movie exciting.

The most romantic movies always end up with neither happiness nor sadness, but (500) Days of Summer end up with each personal feeling about the content of the movie.  

The natural characters in the movie are also an important factor to full fill the reality in this film. Tom Hansen and Summer Finn are the main characters that have general personalities. Tom is just a boy who believes in destiny and hopes that someday he will meet somebody, and Summer is a girl who always thinks that love is just fantasy.

To me, these characters can be found from many people around me that have different thoughts about love so the movie can reflect more real life by using the plain characters in narration and invite the audiences to take part in the moment of each scene. I think that the simple characters are the significance components in this film that the most viewers can easily link with their experiences.

In the movie, it is a story during 500 days that the boy meets the girl. The director does not order scenes from first day to last day; in contrast, he switches between scenes in order to compare the past with the present in the film. Although the story skips back and forth, it’s not a problem because when each scene is arranged together, the story smoothly goes on. I believe this technique brings a newfangled movie style to screenland because it can make an ordinary romantic comedy plot more interesting and creative.

The great distinctions of (500) Days of Summer are the simple content, the natural characters and the nonlinear narration. These things may seem normal but when they are mixed together, they become an excellent different film since it presents the same old love story in alternative way. I’m sure that this movie opens a new vision for viewers and fascinates them with a creative concept expressed in the movie.