Summary and Analysis for the film “500 Days of Summer”
“500 Days of Summer” is a film based on the relationship between a man and a woman in their mid-twenties. In the opening seen, the omniscient narrator warns the audience of the outcome of the story by stating, “This is not a love story.” The main characters, Tom and Summer, both work at a Greeting Card Company. Summer is a new employee, and Tom begins to fall in love with her quirky personality and physical attractiveness. Summer only wants to be Tom’s friend with no commitments, but she treats him as if she has more intentions. Tom and Summer become the best of friends, but they also act as if they are lovers. Because of this, Tom begins to fall even more in love with Summer. Summer tells Tom that they should have distance after a while but throws in the phrase, “But you are still my best friend.” This breaks Tom’s heart. After some time, Tom meets with her again, and he still has hope that they will end up together. To his disappointment, he finds that she is in engaged to another man. Towards the end of the film, Summer finds Tom at the park, and she tells him that she is now married. At the very end, Tom is attending a job interview, and he asks a girl on a date who’s name (coincidently) happen to be “Autumn”.
The whole movie is based on what is going on in Tom’s mind. Christopher Orr observes in Atlantic magazine says, “We see the central relationship through Tom’s eyes exclusively, with Summer ultimately remaining as unknowable to us as she is to him.” Tom never gives up on believing that he and Summer were meant to have a fantasy kind of love until he finally encounters Summer as an engaged woman. He only rides on the highs of the relationship, and this leads to his own downfall. Tom won’t accept Summer’s lack of commitment and desire to be in a true romantic relationship. Orr summarizes this by saying,“We leap from Day 28 to Day 303 to Day 167 to Day 408, oscillating between early hope and ultimate despair, the sudden, unbidden revelation of love and the slow, crushing realization that it is not requited.”
Despite the film having two main characters, the cinematography only correlates with the emotions of Tom. The relationship between Tom and Summer is very confusing and uncertain, and Tom’s emotion with is a dizzy roller coaster. Orr says in his article, “ It’s been some time since I’ve seen a film that captures with such immediacy the elation and anxiety of new love, the tingle and the terror, the profound sense that you have never been more alive and the occasional wish that you could die on the spot.” The cinematography displays all of Tom’s conflicts with the different styles of images within the flashbacks, drawings, music, and picture. When Tom is high on the idea of love, the colors of the film are brighter. Summer’s wardrobe always consists of blue, like the color of her eyes, until the end when she is married and she is wearing gray. The blue clothing is a reference to the way that Tom is caught up in the appearance and beauty in the idea of Summer. In his mind he is under the illusion that she is “the one.” There are many ways to interpret the whole psychological theme of the film, but the general theme is that loving someone doesn’t necessarily mean that it is “meant to be” between you and that person.
The film is directed towards the complications and inconsistency of a relationship. It shies away from the typical Hollywood theme that “love is a fantasy,” and directs itself towards the reality that a relationship doesn’t always turn out the way a person intends it to.