Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer may very well become the Singles, Swingers, Empire Records (kind of) or Reality Bites of its moment. It is that rare animal that is often tried but rarely succeeds, a romantic comedy that attempts to capture the aesthetic along the edges of an epoch’s urban center; the edgy confines of those who can name all the Pixies albums and lead singers of the Replacements, Breeders, Lemonheads, Killers and Velvet Underground, can quote the Simpsons, Shakespeare and Blake at will, discern between surrealists and situationalists, explain existentialism and define irony, know ten bands and authors you’ve never heard of, are fluent in Truffaut and Fellini, can look cooler than you for $10, and otherwise wade in the odd place where high and low culture meet. Like the other films in this genre, it centers around a love affair with a series of side characters to fill in the ambience, though in this case a relationship that is destined for failure and side characters less compelling than the others mentioned above. As the film jumps back and forth in time, with occasional narration, plenty of animation and other effects to heighten its cleverly though clearly “constructed” feel, we find ourselves rooting for Tom Hansen (Joseph-Gorden Levitt) and Summer Finn (the charming Zooey Deschanel) even as we suspect the outcome to come. Summer is the sort of girl that anyone who wasn’t cool in high school can’t help but fall in love with – a flakey, intelligent, flighty girl that floats through life with a keen eye to pleasure and the less discernible beauty that hides on the edges and periphery; the kind of girl that is smarter than you and makes you earn her adoration (but whose worth the effort). The film is a visual bricolage of experimentation and references that breezily move from one topic or technique to the next with little concern for narrative continuity. But it somehow works in the end. The main problem with the film, from my perspective, is the acting job of Gorden Levitt, who I think fails to really capture the pain and exultation of love lost and found. I also feel the character is written with some serious flaws – a sell out with great hidden talent that never really translates well to the screen; particularly given the apartment he inhabits. The sort of drifting undertone of this genre seems to fail a little here as well, as all the characters seem to have money and a little too much material comfort for the roles they play. Yet 500 Days certainly works overall, with one left to wonder in the end if the question of love and fate is really resolved . . . or ever will be. (A-)