Review of (500) Days of Summer (2009) by Dalem — 06 Aug 2009

This most excellent film is not your typical love story. As a matter of fact, it may not be a love story at all. In some ways it's more about growing up than it is about love. In other ways it's more about how we perceive reality than it is about love or growing up.

In other ways it's more about the indefatigable spirit of life and about not ever really growing up but about how one season just flows into the next in a wonderful cycle driven, as Dante pointed out, by the power of love.

So in the end, it really is a love story. The story in this film is told in non-chronological order. The structure is more like the structure of memory. In our consciousness, memories from different past time periods pop up next to one another without chronological ordering.

Yet despite it being told as a series of memories, the end of the film is more difficult to predict than your typical romantic comedy. The non-chronological story line is only one way that 500 Days of Summer presents life in subjective terms.

Our emotions often color our perceptions. In this film, the story is colored by the main character's emotions. When he is happy, he remembers happy things and perceives happiness around him. If you watch the film closely, you will even how the movies tend to mold his perceptions.

At one point, I thought I was watching a scene from the Graduate, but it was actually an original scene in the film. The end result of all this originality is a film with a wide emotional range that is lots of fun.

Excellent acting, good music, and good art direction and dancing.