500 days of Summer
This isn’t a story about a normal guy meeting a normal girl. This is about a normal guy meeting a classy, sexy female. And this changes a lot in the dynamics between them. The pointer of the control exuded doesn’t shift from one to the other. It constantly is pointing towards the female. It may be the same when a normal girl meets classy hunk, but I will be the last person to have any opinion on that. Thinking on those lines is out of my territory. While on the other hand, I am a living testament of the guy’s perspective in a certain ‘one sided’ or ‘can’t be labeled’ relationship with an awe inducing female. And 500 Days Of Summer is precisely that and also how basic gender behavioral differences surface out in a relationship and create a wreck.
At the start of the film itself the movie acknowledges the fact that Summer, the female in question, is no ordinary female. The store she worked in during her college reported a steep rise in sales, the bus in which she travelled shows rise in passengers travelling by that route and she always gets a good discount on the house rent wherever she stays. That is the Summer effect. She is influential. And tell me, aren’t there such females around us? There surely are. They are devastatingly good looking. And just their affable smiles would make all the males go weak in their knees. This is much like the exaggeration we see in Hindi movies, and especially in Farah khan movies. Summer (Zooey Deschanel) exudes such charm and commands eyeballs around her. Unfortunately and unfairly ( 
) she joins an office where Tom, the guy in question, has been working for 2 years. And from hereon starts the frustrating journey of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with Summer.
The overused ‘You know, we can be really good friends’ line is not used in this film as just a joke. It is used for what it really is, and what a guy feels on hearing it. It is an easy cop out for females, who are scared to put across some things bluntly. ‘I don’t like you in that way.’ Why don’t females understand, there are no two ways for guys, its either you like them or you don’t like them. Guys don’t understand this way and that way. Especially when they are betting their lives on your answer. They don’t want to be your good friends, they want to be your boyfriend or else move on with life. They can’t be two people at the same time, pretending to be good friends and burning inside with attraction or whatever that overpowering feeling is called. I know you don’t want to hurt them by telling them things too frankly, but please think of something new to say next time when a guy comes begging for your affection, don’t pull off ‘good friends’ or ‘not in that way’.
The gender behavioral differences that I referred to earlier comes in play when Summer tells Tom “We should stop seeing each other” while they are sitting in a restaurant. Tom is devastated and Summer is well aware of the repercussions her sentence could have. The ordered pancakes arrive. Now Summer, to avoid any arguments, nonchalantly says “Wow, the pancakes look good. Lets finish the pancakes and then talk.” Tom looks down on his food and is simply disgusted by the sight of the pancakes. The point I’m arriving at is that females are much more capable of putting up a façade while ruminating inside on some other thing. Especially when in critical situations. Males on the other hand find it rather difficult to pull of such duality. Tom gets so disgusted on hearing the pancake line that he just gets up and blasts away from the table.
500 Days of Summer essentially charts 500 days of Tom in ‘love’ with Summer. The narrative is beautifully structured non-linearly, oscillating between the good days and the bad days. Roger Ebert very superbly explains the essence of this narrative structure in his review.
“We never remember in chronological order, especially when we’re going back over a failed romance. We start near the end, and then hop around between the times that were good and the times that left pain. People always say “start at the beginning,” but we didn’t know at the time it was the beginning.”
The film surely is a truthful account of a guys perspective in relationships which they get into when they are in their early twenties. I myself can safely vouch for that. It is heartbreaking too, when certain notions and expectations, which are ingrained through popular movies, are shattered and life happens. But the film falters whenever it opts for the popular rom-com strokes to advance the story. 
The film is actually trying to revolt against these romantic movies, and it irks me and saddens me to see the film employing those very ploys to derive the character interactions. I’m not able to recollect any particular scene to exemplify my point, but I could very much feel those ‘popular’ undercurrents which occasionally popped out as glaring spikes. Now, contradictorily, as I replay the movie in my head I question myself, were the scenes with some real substance and truth the occasional spikes in an otherwise popular rom-com format, or was it the other way around. The core of the movie is so close to me that I am hell-bent on believing the latter. But I have no doubts in saying that the last scene betrays the whole theme of the movie and is surely dumbed down to clichéd.
Note to all the twenty something guys: If ever you have felt like a loser in presence of a female, this film may climb up right into your all time favorites. 
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“The point I’m arriving at is that females are much more capable of putting up a façade while ruminating inside on some other thing. Especially when in critical situations. Males on the other hand find it rather difficult to pull of such duality. Tom gets so disgusted on hearing the pancake line that he just gets up and blasts away from the table.”
I disagree. Men can be just as conniving and manipulative as women when it comes to relationships. Whoever is not as much in love in the relationship or more dominant can pull off the duality you are talking about. Its not a characteristic specific to one gender.
Ok, I think my example may be wrong, but I still strongly believe that females are more capable of putting an act. One can just look into a guys eyes and see through them, but a females eyes will be always deceptive.
Other thing, lets say a guy can put up an act. But I seriously doubt he can keep the act going for more than couple of days.
.
This stems out of my own experiences and may be I’m making a mistake by generalising. U may be entirely right when you say “Whoever is not as much in love in the relationship or more dominant can pull off the duality”. I guess I need to be on the other side of the relationship for a change
Gaurang, unfortunately I havent read the post yet but I read the comment only cuz u had written it.. and so totally agree with you … this is not to say that woman are more deceptive or something, but its more to do with the fact that a woman can contain so many things in her, and keeping a deception to herself is also part of this remarkable attribute… and when they do that…. man they can be pro assassins.. murder without any trace of evidence left
PS,
tum meri posts kyun nahi padhte??
Love is in a fleeting moment ..its in endless amts of time spent together while its unrequited ….
Its that bloody magic we crave when its long gone and we bend backwards recreating it….
Gaurang, I haven’t seen the movie yet ( hope to see it soon) but as a fellow sufferer of a 2000 days – one sided, more than friends, less than lovers , cannot be labelled, almost soulmatish relationship – I cannot help but so totally relate to your post.
And though I dont have statistical evidence, I believe only 0.00001% of such relationships might actually turn out to be a ‘real’ relationship. The rest remain in that very conveniently faked out zone of random smiles, insipid information exchange and a lot of silent heartaches.
Women, they love the attention, unconditional that is, and they will hardly ever say a decisive No. The ‘I don’t want to lose you as my best/special/friend’ is the biggest piece of crap I have ever heard. Nowadays whenever I have see a remote chance of me getting into this utterly vague zone, i just do a shift delete and move on.
On a different note, zooey is ethereal in the promos! So hoping to watch this film.
Good review man, the personal touch takes it to a different level altogether
People always say “start at the beginning,” but we didn’t know at the time it was the beginning.” again a nice post gaurang.keep igniting!
Ah, does not matter.
Autumn at the end was like 10 times hotter than Summer.
She may be hot, but the Summer effect is something else man!! Oh, Those big round light coloured eyes of Summer. Those eyes by themselves are enough to be drooling at for an entire 500 days!
hey,I was gonna write abt it Gaurang, anyways, a good post!
Brilliant movie, birlliant direction, loved the use of split screens in the credits and the expectations and reality scene. Marc Webb is a good director n hope he continues the good work, the back ground score was also good.
When all of Tom’s expectations come crashing down, we hear Regina Spektor in the background saying “He never saw it coming at all,at all”, brilliant use of background music.
Loved the wit of the screenwriters to introduce Tom to a girl called Autumn in the end,notice the scar on her chin, its symbolic of the fact that Tom was scarred from the inside n she from the outside,foreshadowing their compatibility.
Everyone acted well in it!
I love this film….One of the best romantic flicks in past few years….
I love the scene where Tom’s friend comes in and asks him If he got a blow job yet… :-)
Is this supposed to be a review??? And is the subsequent discussion related to the “movie” in ANY way???
A well written piece, Gaurang.
Rishab – not all reviews read like the one’s we’re so used to reading in newspapers, there’s a personal touch here which makes it different from those reviews.
Arun,
I am all for writing reviews in novel ways.And I agree that if read just as an account of someone’s personal impressions/feelings on seeing a movie, this piece does make for a decent read.
But this is not a review . We shouldn’t confuse the 2.The acid test for a review, as far as I am concerned is: Does it tell me sufficiently about the movie; even if it’s strictly from the critic’s POV.
You might have your own definition of what constitutes a review. I respect that.
I just expressed mine.
sounds like a personal tirade…been there done that though…first and only time i watched this movie i was nursing JD for 2 weeks…some memories just don’t leave you no matter what
A 21st century fairytale, something relevant, there are plenty of other fishes in the sea and nothing is meant to be, its all about co-incidence.
I read this script few days back, had great expectations, but what I got was a story about simple things, but it did have its moments. Reading your review further reaffirmed the suspicions. Now I am thinking this has the making of a great movie. Liked your inferences and connections with real life. Bade experienced lagte ho yaar! good stuff.
When a guy is attracted to a female above his league, simple things become difficult to understand for the guy. In short the guy becomes a chutiya!!
or he becomes a PUA. Learn from the masters. Long story… someday