I guess he'd like to have been Ronnie Kray, but then nature didn' t make him that way

Each Day, A Film
January 12th 2011

I thought 500 Days of Summer was, if not incredible, then fascinating.



It's not so much the film itself - although that's shiny, really - it's more the way it's presented. For the last few articles I've been talking about the problems that different styles and narratives being smooshed together poses, but it's nice to see a film where a unique style and a relatively unique narrative come together.

Let's split them down the middle; the style is unique because of the relative randomness of the time jumps between the 500 days, going from end to middle to beginning to wherever fits most at the time. Time distortion isn't a unique feature of movies - from a recent screenwriting course I distinctly remember being advised to transplant some of the ending towards the beginning of the script to establish tension and intrigue - but it's nice to see it done well.

The thing is is that the story here isn't about the relationship; it's about Tom's development, which occurs out of order. Besides, it's not even a relationship; I'm sourcing this quote from TV Tropes, so go there and look (but be prepared to lose a lot of time...), but the Word Of God runs thusly:

"Yes, Summer has elements of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — she is an immature view of a woman. She's Tom's view of a woman. He doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak. In Tom's eyes, Summer is perfection, but perfection has no depth. Summer's not a girl, she's a phase."

You can view that as mysoginist if you like - being as Deschanel's character isn't a 'girl' but a 'phase', but then again, I get the feeling that many of us - myself included - have known someone, whether romantically or not, who was a 'phase' rather than a person.

I'm relatively fond of this terminology, in fact, because over the last ten years or so there have been two or three people who were phases - one lasting three years, one lasting seven - phases that, in fact, ended with (on my part, at least), a relative lack of grace. Before that, the last 'relationship' I had could equally be viewed as a phase, but one that put me off phases. But let's avoid talking about that, for now.

So in structural terms, the film makes sense if you view it as Tom looking back on the 500 days in some form of therapy; if the narrator is Tom himself, it kind of points towards some sort of closure on his part.

Also, before this gets too in-depth, let's not forget that this film has goddamn Agent Coulson as Tom's boss, who disappointingly doesn't kick the tar out of him over donut choices.



Yeah, I'll admit I got a bit distracted by that. Also by the fact that, looking at the above few paragraphs, I've started to mix the structure in with the narrative, which probably shows you how closely related they are. But there are some really nice stylistic touches; call it magical realism if you want, but the Singing! and Dancing! segment after the first night shared together is really, really cute, and the rest of the film kind of plays with the silly putty of the narrative format without ever truly letting it snap.

Anyway, again, this isn't another in-depth article in particular, but I do recommend the film. There'll be quite a lot of films I wouldn't recommend coming up, so look on this as a good-will gas stop if you like, but let's not make things too ominous...