So, a week ago Tina and I decided that we wanted to watch 500 Days of Summer (well, I decided — Tina wasn’t totally sold because of her dislike of Zooey Deschanel). I tried to convince her to accept it on its merits, especially given the presence of the always excellent Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who we both agree is easily the best actor of his generation (see: Brick, The Lookout, Mysterious Skin, etc., with the possible exception of his turn as Cobra Commander in GIJoe: The Rise of Cobra). She relented, and we set out to download it.  Unavailable, on XBOX Live, we found it on Playstation Network, which meant that we would not get to see it that night.  Downloading movies on PSN is a rather slow affair.  It ended up taking six hours.  Thanks, Sony.

500 Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer

We finally got around to watching it last night.  A modern day Annie Hall (but hell, what smart “romantic” comedy can’t be described that way?), 500 Days of Summer charts the relationship and breakdown of  Tom Hanson and Summer Finn, a couple who meet at work at a greeting card company and become involved, only to have their strange friendship/romance inexplicably fall apart.  There’s a post-modern meta commentary going on throughout — the movie tells us that it is not a love story, which is somewhat true.  Tom, who the narrator informs us is a hopeless romantic ruined by years of listening to British indie pop and the ending of The Graduate, thinks he loves Summer, who is presented to the audience as blank slate — a cipher through which Tom projects his hopes and dreams. Summer tells Tom that she doesn’t want a serious relationship, that she doesn’t believe in love, but he is unwilling to believe her.  We don’t really get to know Summer as a fully realized character until the end of the film, when Tom finally accepts that he’s been deluding himself.  I’m sure there’s reviewers out there who say that Summer is a flat stereotype used to illustrate how women manipulate men, but in reality she’s drawn the way she is because Tom isn’t capable of viewing her as a person.

The film is told somewhat out of order, with title cards informing us which day it is in the timeline.  There are obvious nods to Annie Hall, hollywood musicals, Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal and Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculine Feminine. among others.  Although the film is set in LA, it doesn’t feel like LA. Rather than focusing on the sunshine, warmth and palm trees usually associated with the city, director Marc Webb shoots it like Woody Allen’s New York.  It’s the romanticized Los Angeles of Tom’s dreams, with epic buildings and beautiful parks.

I expected an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind redux, but what I got instead was the story of a young romantic who has constructed an artificial view of love, only to find that view shattered and reformed through his relationship with Summer.  To say more would ruin the movie, but I enjoyed it immensely. Definitely one of the best movies I saw that was released in 2009 — not as great as Moon or Inglourious Basterds, but as remarkable as other great comedies like Zombieland and Adventureland.

It’s also worth noting that it has an excellent soundtrack dominated by the Smiths and even features a surprising and funny reference to classic 1990′s Belle and Sebastian.

Here’s the trailer: