(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer Review

Having worked mostly on music videos, Marc Webb takes a leap by putting a twist on romantic comedies with this 2009 flick. The story of Tom and Summer is not your usual love story as it takes you on the ups and downs of a seemingly more real relationship.  The audience is taken on a journey of the 500 days that their off-beat relationship gets tested.

Marc Webb leaves the stereotypical Hollywood view of romance in a creative way. The movie starts halfway through it… the audience can be confused as to what’s going on because, not only does it not seem like a beginning but, you have a narrator telling you “this is not a love story”. This “confusion” left in the audience is a very unique way of foreshadowing what’s going to happen between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his girlfriend, who we later find out is Summer (Zooey Deschanel), but still leaving the mystery of how it’s going to end.

A series of jump cuts with numbers in parenthesis are used throughout the movie as the audience catches on that it’s the days that Tom has known Summer. The background of the parenthetical numbers also use symbolism as to show what kind of day it will be for the couple, good or bad, and sequentially what kind of lighting you will expect to see. The gaze comes in handy to Gordon-Levitt as he shows Tom’s admiration for Summer throughout the story. Music is used widely throughout the movie as it is the way Tom and Summer first really connect and it, later, illustrates Tom’s mood. A narrator that comes in occasionally or a cartoon/musical sequence that pops out of nowhere are great ways to keep the audience intrigued. Though it can technically be out-of-place, it helps elucidate the mood of whatever is happening at that moment. Like the drama or comedy one was not expecting to see, Webb used a unique collaboration of many techniques to create a story about love that will not be forgotten.