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You don't get a lot of romances told from the dude's perspective, but then again we males are emotional redoubts who would never ever do something like write a song about a girl or drink whiskey with the lights off thinking about how we screwed up or any of those things other, wimpier genders do when they're heartbroken.
Little-known fact, but "Dante Alighieri" was actually the pen name of some old-time lady busted up over her ex-boyfriend Burt. It's more widely understood that every mopey pop song isn't an honest expression of feelings but is rather a cunning ploy to get laid. All those paperback romances? Written by women, except all the ones secretly written by men because people don't like reading a a romance novel with a guy's name on the cover.
So to see (500) Days of Summer profess to be about a relationship from a male point of view is a little exciting, and not just because it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for whom my good feelings are not entirely professional. It's a chance for the film to do something special or fail especially hard.
Gordon-Levitt believes in true love, but isn't so sure how to achieve it. He's intrigued by Zooey Deschanel the moment she starts working at their greeting card office, but it isn't until they share a moment over a Smiths song that he decides to run up the colors and attempt to board her.
Thing is, she thinks love is an illusion; she'll date, but only if its casual. After a while, Gordon-Levitt's need for something more starts to strain whatever it is they have together.
Briefly, because I hate saying anything good about anyone or anything, I want to give the local Carmike a silent but props-filled nod of approval. I don't know a lot about the decisions that go into what ends up playing where, but when it comes to smaller releases, movies that might not necessarily make it to the Tri-Cities, it feels like a lot of them end up passing through Carmike screens. If that's a deliberate priority, then I say keep up the good work, because it gets us pretty awesome stuff like (500) Days of Summer.
(500) Days is an indie movie, which these days is almost as much about the way its story is told ("quirky" and "whimsical" get used a lot to describe this subgenre) as it is about the size of its budget and how many screens it's on. Director Marc Webb and first-time screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber do some of that indie business here: there's a third-person narrator, a chopped-up chronology, the odd fantasy sequence, a bunch of minor stylistic tricks that aren't necessary but are usually fun.
What makes it work even when it doesn't is that they never put those quirky conceits over the truth of the story. It's implied that Gordon-Levitt's relationship is drawn from the filmmakers' lives, and I can believe it. The details are personal but honest, not always flattering, a vivid picture of a young man struggling to keep his head in rough emotional waters.
As for Deschanel's character, she's got that skittish oddball thing going, but not in the way critic Nathan Rabin has dubbed the "manic pixie dream-girl." She isn't like slapping Gordon-Levitt with trout in his sleep or crafting him love notes out of rhinestones and beef hearts. (Incidentally, that is my plan to win him over just so I can have him act on my porch all day, so if I hear that's how any of you go after him, you and me are going to exchange brutalities.) Her behavior is as painful as it is endearing, straining their relationship in ways it's easy to identify with.
Not every part of (500) Days is that successful. A few of its narrative tricks get disruptively intrusive, and the unrealistic moments stick out sorely (notably Gordon-Levitt's absurdly precocious younger sister, who comes off more like a chain-smoking multiple-divorcee who dropped out of a psychology program rather than like a 9-year-old child).
But that means it's taking risks, and most of those risks pay off. (500) Days is funny and heartfelt and made all the right casting choices. Neither its director nor its writers had much to their credit before this, but one movie later they're names to watch out for.
Grade: B+
