Review of (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

In-between applying to jobs though, which feels like such a full time job in itself, I wanted to relax my brain on some days. I tend to go for harder movies with subjects and themes that are thought provoking in more direct ways, i.e. how does a genocide mess up an entire population for generations and how can we fix that?

While I do enjoy thinking hard, I wanted a break for a few days, so I watched some romance classics. Yesterday was Notting Hill, which was truly just mediocre for me, and today is (500) Days of Summer. This was my first time watching this film, even though I’ve known about it for so many years now.

Let’s get into the review!

A man gets into a relationship with a girl named Summer, but when it ends, he’s unable to move on properly.

So something about this movie: it’s actually edited in a way where the narrative isn’t liner. So it jumps around between past and present, filling in the holes in the story as needed. I think it works for this kind of movie, keeping you on your toes so you’re wondering what exactly happened here, but for the sake of the summary portion of this review, I’m reflecting on it in chronological order.

Our main character in this movie is Tom, and he works at a greeting card company where he has to actually write the inspiration messages on the card. When a woman named Summer is hired at the company, they form a bond with each other over music and chatting about love, but there’s a flag from the beginning: she doesn’t really believe in love.

His friend does expose him for having a bit of a crush on Summer, but then Summer kisses him only a few days later. He wants a more serious relationship, while she doesn’t. This is already a recipe for disaster, but they continue forwards, having sex and bonding over their interests.

However, Tom’s friends and sister notice how Tom wants a more serious relationship, and Summer still is evasive on answering where they’re at. They get into a fight when another man is flirting with Summer, and we see the cracks in their relationship even more when she says she doesn’t know if she can commit to him.

From there, their relationship continues to rupture, as they’re arguing much more frequently. It ends completely when Summer quits her job and decides to break up with Tom, and Tom is very clearly depressed. His boss even moves him over to the condolences department because he can no longer be happy, and he can’t go on dates without talking about Summer.

At a wedding some time later Tom runs into Summer. They seem to have a solid time together and some chemistry, and she invites him to a party. He goes in hopes of something more happening, but she pretty much ignores him for her friends. It’s there he also notices she has an engagement ring; he leaves after he notices that.

Depressed, Tom quits his job a few days later when he expresses hec an no longer write about happiness. Tom, after talking to his sister, realizes that they were not able to really mesh together, and that they were incompatible. He decides to overcome his depression, pursues his passion as an architect, and begins succeeding in life.

Soon, he runs into Summer again. She’s married, and they make amends and determine that she found the person she felt right with, and that Tom’s belief in love does exist. At a job interview, Tom meets a woman named Autumn, and they seem to have great chemistry together.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, I don’t really like romance movies (or books, if we’re going to be honest). I find them to be way too cliche and overdone, and the writing never tends to be good. I always give them a chance though.

This movie? I actually enjoyed it. I think it’s because it focuses on the self healing and development that comes after the death of a relationship, and that it’s not entirely focused on the romance aspect. They weren’t right for each other, and while that wasn’t obvious to the male lead, he learned something along the way and ended up in a better position than before.

The editing and nonlinear format also works really well and freshens up the content and story. I think if it was told entire chronologically I would have been a bit bored with what was going on and it would have felt a bit more traditional. We love experimenting with style—hopefully more movies do that in a successful way! Sometimes it just doesn’t work.

All of this is to say: go watch it if you haven’t already and are interested. Movies are meant to be seen and experienced, not just read about.