(500) Days of Summer (2009)

In (500) Days of Summer (dir. Marc Webb) a messed-up chronology is a device to chronicle a failed romance. Unlike most similar movies, it does not start from the moments at which the parties laid eyes on each other, to go on to various expressions of romantic interest, etc. This film goes about it differently, perhaps wanting to give a more authentic picture of how we remenber things, that when we think back on something, we do not line things up in a neat series of events. Usually, memories appear chaotically, sometimes involuntarily. One thing is associated with another, it's all a jumble of emotion and thought. This is perhaps the most interesting feature of this otherwise conventional tale about the guy who falls for the girl who shies from attachment. - - - My own impression of the way this film takes on its subject is that there are an ugly undercurrent there somewhere. So the guy wants the girl but the girl wants to be independent. The story is told from the guy's perspective, which is also the film's point of view, it seems. I would say that the pespective expressed, but never really acknowledged, is that of self-sentimentality, of pity for oneself. The main character seems more in love with being in love, than nurturing a real interest for the lover. She seems to be reduced to an image, and when she breaks with that image, he is shattered. (500) Days of Summer in no way departs from the old&tired tradition of making movies about guys whose yearning is directed at "mysterious girl", and where this "mysteriousness" is both the core of attraction and the big problem. We end up with the following piece of eternal wisdom: women, you truly madden us men.