500 Days of Summer
PG-13 for sexual material and language
Is there just one person in the world for you -- the one person you are meant to be with forever? Is romantic love just fantasy -- or is it real and worth believing in no matter how foolish it makes you feel? And if your "the one" is out there somewhere, how will you ever know when you find her/him? These are the questions "500 Days of Summer" would like to use to entertain and torture you, especially if you're in the hunt for a significant other.
The Story
Told out of order, the film examines 500 days of a relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a writer of greeting cards and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), an assistant hired at his company.
We jump back and forth between their significant moments on Day 1, Day 325, Day 267, Day 489, Day 10, etc. It's like one of those games where you remove the squares covering a picture, one at a time, to slowly reveal the whole image underneath.
As we begin, we learn Tom is a romantic guy who didn't make it as an architect and has kind of settled into his job and life in L.A. Immediately attracted to Summer, he's sure she'll never go for him -- until she does. The problem is that she doesn't believe in love. She's a realist. She's not looking for anything serious.
None of that stops Tom from falling desperately in love with her. It doesn't help that she's happy to spend every spare moment with him, have sex with him, and open up to him more than she has with any other guy. Still, she's never quite willing to label what they have or call herself his girlfriend.
What's a guy supposed to do with that?
The Verdict
What we thought of the movie on its own terms
What Works: It's not easy to come up with a new approach to telling a comedic/dramatic love story. Director Marc Webb and his team have done exactly that, using strategic time shifting, great dialogue, a cool soundtrack, and lots of quirky elements (dance number, animation, surprise reveals) to make a very standard kind of story feel fresh and newly achy.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel deliver nicely, as well, creating believable characters that could have been a lot less convincing without just the right performances.
What Doesn't Work: A few times, it feels like the movie might be trying just a touch too hard to be clever and keep that indie vibe going. I also got frustrated with some of the characters' choices when they seemed to do dumb things just because the movie needed them to. But neither of those are big complaints.
Content: Tom and Summer start having sex immediately after agreeing not to get serious. They watch and try to imitate a porn video, but nothing explicit is shown. Tom and Summer and their friends drink a lot of alcohol. God's and Jesus' names are used for swearing, along with quite a bit of other harsh language.
Worldview
How the film's take on life compares to a biblical perspective
Part of what makes "500 Days" so successful is that Tom and Summer's relationship rings true for a certain segment of 20-somethings stumbling their way through relationships hoping to wind up with the right person -- or even just a pretty good person -- without any connection to a worldview that includes God or biblical truth.
It's impossible to say that without sounding judgmental, but I honestly don't mean it that way. It is a real problem. When your honest lack of belief leads you to remove biblical definitions of love and commitment -- and moral standards for sexuality -- you're left to try to figure out some way to get into a satisfying relationship and make it work without any real guidelines other than, "How do I feel now?"
Tom experiences genuine agony after thinking and doing everything your mom and youth leader would warn you about. (Or, at least, my mom and youth leader would.) And the most damaging thing isn't necessarily the ones mom would worry about most -- building a relationship pretty much on the three pillars of getting drunk together, having lots of sex, and sharing a love of the Smiths.
Those contribute to the pain once the relationship implodes, but the real killer is Tom's greeting card idea of love. It is paralyzing to view love as an external force that happens to you, delivered by destiny at exactly the right moment with exactly the right person. It leaves you helpless to ever know for sure if you will find -- or have found -- your best match.
Summer sums it up when Tom begs for a commitment, "I just want to know you won't wake up tomorrow and feel differently about me." She says, "Nobody can give you that."
You know this: The Bible doesn't describe romantic love as a force that comes and goes from your life. You may never "just know" what you really want. But you must "just choose." God intends for that kind of love to be a promise you make to another person (before the sex and the drinking and the IKEA) -- a promise you keep even on Day 338 when the feelings feel different than they did on Day 337.
In other words, love is something in our power to control, not something that controls us. That should be especially true for guys, who are told to make the choice to love (and keep loving) their wives as Christ loves the church and gave Himself (died) for her. I will love you. No matter how I wake up feeling tomorrow.
Of course, you can't make someone make that promise back to you. It's tough to be in the place of wanting to give love to someone and not having someone to love. That makes it really tempting to latch on to the first Summer to come along, willing to play house for a season but not interested in making promises. That's a trap that almost always leads to pain.
Better to trust God's timing -- and His definition of love -- than to leave your fate in the hands of faceless destiny. Even if it means waiting a little longer for summer to arrive.
Questions
- How did you rate this "Summer"?
- Have you or any of your friends ever had a relationship experience like this one?
- Do you believe there's a "the one" for everyone? Or do you believe romantic love is a fantasy? Or do you believe, as the Bible seems to teach, that love is a choice, a promise to give ourselves away to another person for life?
- How hard is it to believe what the Bible teaches about love, sex, and marriage in a culture that mostly doesn't believe that?
- Have you found that it's hard to find other people who believe love is a verb, something you do, not something that happens (or stops happening) to you?
- Can you enjoy the filmmaking and experience of a movie like "500 Days of Summer" even if you disagree with the worldview it seems to be teaching?
Comments
Grithien on Oct 05, 2009 said...
I want to say - thank you for this!,
Gorewien on Oct 05, 2009 said...
Very cute 
))),
Umorwen on Oct 05, 2009 said...
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right.,
Nerissa on Nov 12, 2009 said...
I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after. http://uprifunnmvc.com
lilikindsli on Oct 01, 2009 said...
H2GfD8 I want to say - thank you for this!