(500) Days of Summer Post-Release Discussion - Page 3

Super-Incredibly-Minor-Nitpick: NONE of the greeting cards he wrote sound anything like an actual greeting card.

Between his dance number in (500) and his stint on SNL, Levitt needs to be cast in a musical instantly. Where's his Newsies?

Who here hasn't had his Summer(s) and can't relate to that alone?! Deschanel's character depiction is perfect.

Yes the movie has flaws yet it's more enjoyable and and more worthy than most of what's coming out in that genre.

This easily outranks Garden State for me, even though (like people have already said) this is trying too hard to be the Annie Hall for this generation. I like it!

I don't think it tries to be a new ANNIE HALL, the assumption is even weird, and I doesn't compare to GARDEN STATE either, they're both equally good but toally different movies.

Well, there's definitely a connection to Annie Hall, but it's quite broad- the relationship that doesn't work out, but you're glad you had it, and there's some interesting stylistic flourishes in both.

Regarding Garden state, apart from the manic pixie dream girl stuff, they're pretty different.

Put it this way: you don't think it's heavily influenced by ANNIE HALL? Call it an homage, an imitation, whatever, I think it's clearly trying to be like ANNIE HALL. Maybe trying to "be the new ANNIE HALL" or "ANNIE HALL of this generation" is a slightly different, more specific thing, but you gotta admit the similarities are there and have to be deliberate.

No, it's really not weird at all.

I can't compare this in any way to ANNIE HALL except that they're both romantic comedies. Actually ANNIE HALL is more honest than SUMMER - unlike this movie, you know exactly why Annie leaves Alvy. He's funny but insufferable, and she's actually better off without him. This movie doesn't really let you in on Summer's inner life - you can guess why she leaves but the movie never spells it out exactly.

I loved this movie, but ANNIE HALL is the obvious superior film, no comparison.

But that's ultimately a pretty minor difference compared to what I'm talking about. In terms of the overall package - the style, the tone, the POV, the structure, etc. - seems to me that ANNIE HALL was probably the #1 influence on this film. And yeah, obviously ANNIE HALL is the vastly superior film, but I'm not comparing the quality here.

what

Thankfully because that would be like comparing STAR WARS with THE HIDDEN FORTRESS.

I still think those similarities with ANNIE HALL are far fetched and somewhat irrelevant to me, and even so, so what? No film today can not be influenced or not have cinematographic parents and ancestors and in this case it seems in the best way were it dissociates itself from its inspiration to be something else of its own.

Come on guys, this movie was shitty. All the cutesy pretentious bs made the film seem so fake. The girl was typically this quirky free spirit! Oh please! Thats so sterotypical.

I honestly couldn't work up any appreciation for this movie. It left me totally cold and struck me as a little pretentious and empty.

Not the biggest fan of this, but how is it pretentious?

I was into it until about 10 seconds before the ending, they might as well have had a trombone going wah wah at the end.

But this is more than having influence or parentage. It's imitation as flattery. And it doesn't make itself something else of its own. It feels like lukewarm leftovers from ALL of its parentage.

There's the kernel of a solid story lodged in the heart of the movie, lopsided and incomplete as it is, with its inability to understand the actions or motivations of summer (it could be argued that is part of the point, as the movie centers around a character who is incapable of doing so, but the filmmakers should know these things, and it doesn't seem they do).

The problem is they take this little kernel, and in an effort to make the movie seem bigger, or more important, or more profound, than it is, they pile all this stuff on top of it.

You've got hollow references to pop-culture, a nonlinear narrative structure that does not serve to enhance the story or themes (why does this love story need to be told out of sequence? Because its cool!), various visual tricks (I will admit that the reality/fantasy sequence is a clever, if not original, use of split-screen), a superficial engagement of architecture which seems only to serve to give Tom a passion that is not gift card writing (when really in a movie that wants to be as structurally complicated as this one wants to be it should be more deeply integrated into the fabric of the film). The movie actually never really manages to show us what Tom loves so much about architecture, its only able to tell us that he does (much like it never really shows us why he loves Summer, just telling us that he does).

The movie also has trouble with tone, seeming mostly to attempt to subvert the various conventions of romantic films, while simultaneously and un-ironically embracing the conceit of the precocious younger sibling who is wise beyond her years, who is able to give the clearly more romantically experienced Tom advice on his love life.

Thinking about the movie, I'm reminded about a book called The World In A Frame, by Leo Braudy. In the book, Braudy proposes the ideas that at their beginnings, films fit into one of two basic styles, open and closed, the idea being that open films attempt to document reality with the frame being a window into a world that exists beyond its borders, while closed films are quite deliberately artifice with characters and events loaded heavily with specific symbolic meanings, and with the frame serving as a box that contains the entire universe of the film. In an open film the world goes on before and after the movie plays, and in a closed film the world only exists for the duration of the film.

There's also more complicated issues involved as to how open and closed films deal with themes in different ways, particularly in how they depict things like social constructs. Now starting with the French New Wave, and then with New Hollywood, and the advent of blockbusters the styles were mixed and merged, and strictly open and closed films don't really exist in the mainstream anymore.

What can happen is that the elements can be mixed inappropriately, where the filmmakers don't fully understand which mode their film primarily falls into or they can't figure out what the want it to be. I think that 500 Days of Summer falls into that area in a lot of ways where it has a lot contradictory stylistic elements, where it clearly wants you to accept the reality of the story, but can't treat its own characters as anything more than ciphers, and constantly feels the need to shove its artifice in your face. There's an old latin saying that goes, "ars est celare artem", meaning "the art is in hiding the art".

Then there's the issue of the films epitaph, which really says it all about the movie: "Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental ... Especially you, Jenny Beckman ... Bitch." Right there you've got an attempt at subversion, a tacit admission of the mean-spirit in which the movie was undertaken. Its not edgy or cool, its just kind of pretentious and mean, and ultimately hollow, because who the hell is Jenny Beckman to anyone other than Jenny or the writer? It doesn't tell us anything about the movie (other than perfectly summarizing the style and tone in which the movie will proceed).

Webb said that the movie is about "an emotion [he] wanted to make a movie about, before [he] forgot how it felt", but in reality, doing something like that generally doesn't allow you to reflect and discover the depth in the story you're telling, it all becomes a rush of unfocused emotion. Sound and fury (admittedly mannered and restrained in this case) signifying nothing.

Ultimately, and the creators seemed to understand this on some level, this is a little story, but they weigh it down with the pretensions of a big one. They stated they wanted to avoid a cliched romantic comedy, but have unironically embraced certain elements of them. They say they wanted to avoid making a sentimental move and turned up with a highly sentimental one.

But for me, the killing blow, is that the movie never earns its emotional responses. It coasts on the life experience of its audience, rather than building those elements into the film that would allow everyone to be impacted similarly regardless of what has happened to them.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of the film. Webb says that its not a "big movie about war or poverty or anything", but at some level he seems to understand that love is, in its way, as big or bigger than either of those. Intellectually he can't seem to engage that honestly and the movie ends up working at cross purposes to itself, piling on complications without really understanding why its doing so. He piles on a heap of pretensions because something tells him that something big is going on in the movie, but doesn't realize that it will seem bigger and more important if it is smaller and quieter.


In its way it's the ultimate hipster movie, and the defining characteristics of hipsterdom are the pitfalls of (500) Days of Summer, a detached irony and a sense of pretension.


Or am I over-thinking this whole thing?

This is one of my girlfriend's and my favorite movies.

I only just saw it last night and reading the review (and Nooj's early posts in this thread) I have to say that captured exactly what's right and wrong with the film for me too. It's got some nice ideas and is well enough played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but it has a few too many half-assed ideas and empty flourishes to come out as a film worth remembering.

No punishment for over-thinking here Bill- that a really good post.

Is that book you mention worth a read Billy? Sounds interesting. Apologies for selectively highlighting stuff to respond to, but I agree with a lot of what you've written. I think the visual tricks and stylistic flourishes make the film more interesting to watch, however like you I don't understand the purpose of the non-linear stuff. What does it add? There's a flashback scene in the movie, and the film could have been chronological up to that point, then flashed back, and you wouldn't have lost anything. That probably fits closest to the idea of pretension for me.

Agree that the movie does coast on the audiences experiences at times, but I'm more forgiving of that because i reckon that Webb was aiming to do that to start with- which if anything suggests laziness rather than pretension, he's shooting fish in a barrel in a way.

I disagree with the hipster stuff though (without wishing to get into a whole 'what is hipster?' argument. This is a really super mainstream movie, and by it's end i don't think it's being ironic- heavy handed and a little ridiculous, sure.

And yeah, the precocious sister is a horrible mis-step.

Yeah, this movie would've earned a lot more goodwill from me if they could've shown Tom to have an unconventional approach to architecture that mirrored the movie's structure, thereby giving the movie a reason for being told the way it is.

I just watched it a couple weeks ago for the first time, and while for me it has its merits (Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance, the soundtrack, the musical number), I think it'll be largely forgotten five years from now, a la films like Garden State or American Beauty.

The World in A Frame is totally worth reading Adrian. It a really great piece of genre study, that's really in-depth while being written with the lay-reader in mind. It was written in the 70s, so it covers everything up to the New Wave and the beginning of New Hollywood, which in a way gives a really cool look at the evolution of the principles that have become the bedrock of modern filmmaking.

Caught this finally, and I agree with the majority here. It's a fun movie, I love Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel, there's some experimentation and quirkiness (and a great soundtrack), but something holds it back from greatness.

Mostly problems with the tone: it switches from your standard romantic comedy (something Katherine Heigl might star in) with the lame friends and little sister, to Indie comedy (split screen scenes, serious talking to camera, animation), to John Hughes fourth wall breaking. It almost comes together...but not quite.

I will say that I didn't have a problem with the portrayal of Summer's character. I bring my own baggage to the table, however, having had a pretty shitty 2009 with women, and spending the first half of 2010 lusting after a woman not all that different from Summer. Does she count as a Manic Pixie Girl? The bench scene at the end would suggest that her offbeat, knowing wisdom ("because I wanted to...") has taught Tom a lesson, but MPGs are usually shown to be fragile at their emotional core. What's important about a MPG is that she saves the male lead while needing to be saved herself, but in Summer's case she was actually stronger than Tom and lacked zany vulnerability, instead having a kind of imposing grace.

Hmmmm.

 

 

But that's a valid interpretation of the scene itself. Perhaps Webb wanted us to consider that Tom wants to be in love with Summer as much as she's not in love with him. He's forcing it, which ultimately leads to the relationship being less than organic. The only time Summer gives any ground is when she shows up at his apartment in the middle of the night, and that may have been out of pity on her part. Tom comes across to me as a guy that, at least at that point in his life, wanted something like commitment or marriage to fill the gaping hole in his existence. By the end of the movie he's gained the power of self-respect, and is therefore prepared for a relationship with Autumn.  

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I agree with your take, Bartleby. But I don't think he was forcing it.

 

In regards to the musical number, I don't think it was that he was trying to fool himself into thinking he was floating on air. It's the fact that he's successfully fooled himself into thinking he was floating on air, and he didn't even realize it. For me, the romance in the film falls flat emotionally because... well, it's supposed to. The film may not illustrate its thesis as effectively as it could have, but the film is about a hopeless romantic who has fooled himself into thinking he's found what he's been looking so hard for his whole life. He's projecting all of his desires and wishes on Summer because she's pretty and quirky, and seems to have that indefinable quality about her that all men want.

 

She's actually just another girl who has no idea what she wants, has created this disingenuous pretty/quirky image for herself and keeps him at arms' length. But he ignores all the red flags and all the obvious signs that she's not the one because he's fallen hard and wants so badly for her to be that "one".

 

The main issue with the film for me is that too much emphasis was placed on Tom's getting over Summer as opposed to what Summer represents. A far more poignant film could have been made if they'd stuck closer and remained more committed to the thesis of a guy who wasn't in a loving relationship, but diluted himself into thinking he was, and had projected so much onto a girl that wasn't so great in the first place. Summer being engaged was a fair way to illustrate how flighty and incorrect for Tom that Summer was (on a side note, it's hard to imagine her marriage lasting very long), but we didn't need to see her getting married or any of that. Once she was gone, she should have been gone -- keeping her around (especially bringing her back for that last talk on the park bench) didn't do the film any favors thematically, and just created more of a disjointed sense of what the film was really about.

 

I think they had the material to make a far more interesting film, and I think somewhere down the road, they ended up making a film that was easier and more commercial.

 

 

This is exactly spot on.  Lots of good ideas with no follow through.  Worst of all, it's all too pleased with its own ideas and doesn't care about following through.  It's as if we're supposed to be delighted just because their is a musical sequence.  Who cares how the sequence works, right? 
 

Well, I had something typed out that I was going to wait to post in the OCD thread along with some other films, but I looked and saw that this thread was active relatively recently so I decided to post that here and add some more to it.

 

“Quirky” comedies are usually not my thing. Garden State, no way.* Yet, I decided to give this a chance. To be perfectly honest, what appealed to me was that Minka Kelly appears briefly in the film, and while I certainly enjoy looking at pictures of her, I actually haven't really seen too much of her acting. I mean, for Christ's sake, I recently checked out The Roommate. That movie is pretty awful although at least I was able to laugh at how bad it was, and both Minka and Leighton Meester looked nice.

 

* Then again, I've never understood the appeal of Scrubs either, but that's getting off-topic.

 

Well, the movie and its quirky sense of humor just did not appeal to me at all. As I’ve said elsewhere on the boards while talking about other films, when you don’t like the characters or the story, that's a problem; seeing that real early on, Tom expressing frustration by… slowly breaking dishes… eh, no. Sorry, but that sort of thing just doesn’t appeal to me. That's just stupid and cloying. In fact, truth be told, I was so turned off I couldn’t even finish the film. Why waste any more of my time and get more frustrated with the film?

 

Although, of course I did skip forward to the final scene, as inadvertently I had the ending spoiled awhile back, so I might as well watch the scene and check out the person I wanted to see the most. She looked pretty, sure, but her name being Autumn was just insulting. And like others have said already, the precocious little sister character was just fingernails on the blackboard grating.

 

While I'll admit some of the stuff I saw, like the split-screen, was interesting and I won't complain about that, the jumbled chronology (hey, because Tarantino did it, I guess) and the musical stuff and all the songs included (because, hey, Tarantino does it too) was eh to me. Personally, bands like The Smiths I just don't like at all, or most of the other acts featured.

 

In terms of comparing this to Annie Hall,  I’d much rather prefer Annie. Now there’s a love story told in a quirky way that’s actually sweet and funny.

Really provocative feminist critique of the movie. Love that website.

You don't need to subscribe to the unreliable narrator view of this in order to feel that Summer isn't some kind of villain. I only watched this movie once (honestly wasn't such a huge fan) but I never felt that Tom's perception of his relationship with Summer was anything but him projecting like a motherfucker.

Yes and no. Summer was aloof and kept him at a distance, and Tom was projecting pretty hard the entire time. But when a girl does something like show up at your door in the middle of the night during a rainstorm, after a fight about the definition of the relationship, it's easy for one's perception to be blurred. I think Summer jerked him around in every which direction, but Tom should have known better and still has to claim fair share of responsibility for his own heartbreak.

I dig that article as well, but on a slightly unrelated note, the entire ham-fisted psychoanalysis of a socially-invented stereotype found in that article about "Nice Guys" she links to is some of the most inane drivel I've ever read. The comments on that article are just a marvel of alternatively misogynistic and then reactionary feminist preconceptions about gender roles, with a series of essentialist characters, both male and female, being aggressively vilified. It made me really depressed -- but that's the internet, I guess.

 

As for 500 Days, I do think it situates Summer as emotionally unavailable, impulsive, detached, and certainly manipulative. The fact that Levitt's positioned as someone who gets largely mistreated, and then comes to terms with his own flaws as a result of that mistreatment, is pretty questionable. But then again, it does reprimand him for idealizing her, so in some ways it knows what it's doing -- but since Summer never comes out of the film feeling like a real human being, its moralizing is mostly shallow and derivatively male-centric, as the article points out.