(500) Days of Summer

The movie I chose to see at the Regal Cinemas in Binghamton was (500) Days of Summer, which had heard much about, and which I was very much eager to see. It didn't disappoint me.

At first I thought it was going to be cloyingly unwatchable, but thankfully wrong. The intention of the movie was possibly to make the ultimate story of the Weak Postmodern Man, the stereotypical "average" American young male, in his post-college years, who has no real ability to talk to women whom he desires, and who feels at the mercy of fate and luck when it comes to romance. The young man here (Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets a young woman named Summer (played by by Zooey Deschanel).

The "500" of the title refers to the length of their relationship, from their first encounter until the ultimate end. We learn at the very beginning of the movie that it is probably not going to be a "happy" romantic ending for the two of them as a couple, and the story fulfills this.

Thus we get to see all the "mistakes" that Tom makes along the way as the Weak Postmodern Man. This is what makes the story rise to being the "ultimate" cinematic statement of this type of character and this type of dysfunctional contemporary romance, one that attempts to dissect and analyze every phase of "how things go wrong," at least from the male point of view (at first I typed "Postermodern Man" while writing this).

The Postmodern inversion of sexual roles is in full force in the story, which gave the story a lot of power. To wit, there are two characters, one male and one female. One is career-driven and not interested in romance. The other has no clear career ambitions in the workplace but is really looking for love and romance. Which is the man and which is the woman? I'm sure I don't have to tell you which one.

This inversion is punctuated explicity in several points, including a scene in a diner that appears in the trailer, in which Summer tells Tom that they are like Sid and Nancy (it's always explicity Postmodern for characters in a movie to compare themselves to characters inan other movie). Tom protests that he is nothing like Sid, and Summer replies, "No, I'm Sid," to which Tom replies "So that makes me Nancy!"

Yes, Tom, you are Nancy Boy, a trait you share with millions of other young men your age walking around in our country, and increasingly all of the Western World. That's the point of the movie.

His redemption will arrive not thorugh "finding the perfect romance" but in the old-time classical way: by finding his true path as a man in life.

The cascade of heartbreak we encounter with Tom is bearable, and fresh, because of the manner of the storytelling which is very nonlinear. We skip around in time a lot, with the "day" being indicated by a number in parentheses at the beginning a particular scene.

Actually, it's not as nonlinear as might appear. Like a true epic, it actually beings in media res, then skips back to the very beginning, and ends at the very end (right after day 500). In between, everything in chopped up in time. Thus it is more appropriate to say that we have a classical structure overlaid by nonlinear narrative---the form here follows the function very well.

Increasingly movies such as this, which do not simply accept the Weak Postmodern Man and the Sexual Inversion as given, but play around with them, and help enlighten us about them, are among my favorite of Hollywood films. I Love You, Beth Cooper fell somewhat into this category as well, as an attempt to create the "ulimate" story in this category. I like them both, for different reasons.

Zooey Deschanel really pulled this off very well, by the way. I'm now a fan.