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Discussion
I know this movie is talked about a lot on here. But honestly it is such a beautiful film. There’s something so soft about it despite it portraying some of the most painful aspects of life: unrequited love. It made me so sad I didn’t even want to cry and then brought me right back when he meets Autumn.
It’s such a beautiful film that I will always remember for quite some time. It hits too close to home for some. I know there’s so much debate about the villain but all is fair in love and war. As hard as it is to hear that someone doesn’t love you, I feel like it’s just as hard to tell them.
The quietness of the final scene with Summer just gets to me. I also love her name and the variety of symbolism it has. Summer is when things are always lively and flourishing but life isn’t always like that. Everyone just tries to get to summer sometimes. Also when they see The Graduate together it just kills me because that’s a beautiful film in its own right.
I just need someone to talk about this film with lol
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The expectations vs reality birthday party scene hits hard. Fantastic movie.
Yeah that and the final scene get to me. I understand his pain so heavily. Love sucks sometimes.
A LOT of this movie comes down to how good the soundtrack is.
Not all movies have villains. Some just feature grey people that behave like real people.
I liked it because it just portrays the human condition. She was telling him the same thing all along and he ignored it. They were just people. I loved that aspect.
If you haven't seen it, check out High Fidelity as a sort of companion piece that's a bit more grown-up, with ahappier ending. (<-- vague spoiler here)
These are the best kind of movies IMO. No clear cut rights or wrongs. Just people with different perspectives try to make do. Sometime it works out, sometimes it doesn't, and there's beauty in both. This is one of my favorite movies as it took me multiple viewings spanning across my entire adolescence to finally feel that empathy.
Like OP said, all is fair in love and war.
Yep, that's what the word antagonist is for.
This movie is most effective on people with the most unrealistic expectations. A remedy to all romcoms that came before it, 500 Days of Summer should be required viewing for anyone that doesn't know things won't always go their way.
This is soooo true. We are fed all this fairy tale happy ending our whole lives and it’s so powerful to realize that it doesn’t always work out that way. That’s what I love the most about this film.
And it tells you from the start, this is not a love story but we all get swept away
People who haven't yet realized Tom and Summer are both wrong in different ways and insist one of them must be in the wrong over the other make me groan.
That said, we all have our biases. I'm a female Tom and the uncomfortable points the movie hits about my mentality are brutal.
This is my main gripe with discussions about the film. They always claim that Summer always told Tom she wasn't interested even though her actions contradict her. She has really poor boundaries with him throughout the movie.
This becomes clear when they go back to the apartment after Tom punched a guy at the bar. Tom lays it all out. He tells her straight up that he's not interested in continuing the relationship as anything less than serious. He basically tells her that if all she wants is something casual, then this has got to be over. And he leaves. Summer goes back to him and essentially tells him she's ready to start treating this more seriously.
There's also the wedding scene where she invites Tom to a party without telling the
him at any point that she is not only in another serious relationship, but engaged! That's not cool any way you slice it.
I don't understand where this narrative that "Summer did nothing wrong and she always told Tom she wasn't interested " even came from because it isn't accurate.
Fucking this. And why does nobody talk about the timing here? Stringing along some guy you know is in love with you while building a serious relationship is a scumbag move and emotionally cheating imo
There's been a lot of capital-d Discourse around the idea that the "friend zone isn't real" and whatnot to discourage (mostly) men from acting as if they should be able to earn a romantic relationship. But this points at the other side of that coin: don't accept romantic attention from someone you have no romantic interest in!
I'd give Tom a little more blame for the mess, because he actively ignores her boundaries and keeps pushing until he gets what he wants.
I don't know that you can say catching feelings is a "boundary." People in relationships designated as "casual" fall in love all the time.
I've always thought a great sequel to this would be a movie about Summer's relationship with the dude she married super fast about all the issues they wind up having.
i think the reason why i side with summer, is that Tom pushed her hard till she caved in that scene when she went back to his apartment. she is not perfect (again, something she tells him in the movie), but he kept trying to make them something they werent.
as far as that party invite goes, icr the amount of time between their breakup and the wedding, but is it really bad for her to invite a friend to her house warming/gathering?
i always thought a big point of the movie was how much tom cared and took her seriously, where summer really just did not. and she found someone that she finally did. which happens alot irl lol fair or unfair
That’s what I love about it. I have been in the same position as Tom but I have also been Summer. He was wrong for continuously pressuring her and she was wrong for leading him on. When he asked why she danced with him and she said “Cause I wanted to” in such a soft voice it made me so sad yet so angry at the same time. Gut wrenching in a way.
People act like we have no responsibility for those who pine romantically for us and we're allowed to step on their hearts for some godforsaken reason. Especially if we're female. I'd never treat someone as disposably as Summer treats Tom.
At the same time Tom is a clown who fell in love with the person in his head, over the one in front of him.
Yes but the hardest part for me is that she is so soft about everything. So casual. It’s so hard to hate her because she seems so genuine and real. She was just doing what she wanted in the end and that ended up hurting Tom.
The kicker is that Tom's big sin is ignoring who Summer really is, in favour of the idealized version he creates in his head and falls in love with. But the real version is the Summer who just wants to do what she wants, without commitments, and that's the Summer who was able to hurt Tom so damn badly. And she tells him this!
Tom objectifies Summer, and doesn't bother to get to know her as a person, which is really not a nice thing to do to her, but it comes back to bite him, badly, when she does things that he sees as callous and cruel but are just her being exactly who she told him she was.
Great music. Great actors. Some fanciful and some real stuff.
That scene where Tom finally realizes it was all in his head in the park….just perfection from JGL.
Those type of scenes always screw with my head
This is the quintessential film when talking about the "unreliable narrator"
It’s a 10/10. I watch it at least once a year and it hasn’t lost any of the magic.
This. It's in my top 5 movies and I watch it every year.
Awesome soundtrack
Yes I loved the music so much!
I adore this film, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt absolutely crushes it as Tom. There are so many great scenes where he shows such emotional range, like the work scene where he quits and the expectation vs. reality scene. Love the Hall and Oates dance number. As someone who’d only really seen him act on 3rd Rock, it was really impressive to see JGL go from comedic child actor to full-blown lead actor (think Inception).
500 Days and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are my favorite films about the complexities of love and relationships, from the moments of happiness to the emotional roller coasters of heartbreak.
For me, it's the quintessential movie to portray "love" vs compatibility. It took me several tries to learn the difference.
This taught me so much about life
The thing that bugs me about this movie is that it seems to buy into this notion of "the one," which is a fake thing. Both people in the relationship need to make a decision that they are going to go for it; it's not about some abstract notion of "meant to be." There may be other reasons that the characters shouldn't be together, but the main one is that Summer simply didn't want to try.
There is cool looking unused footage in the trailer. Would love to see a longer version.
A love letter to DTLA and what it used to be.
What is that?
“Villain” is a weird way to describe Summer
If you haven't already, you might want to watch How I Met Your Mother. They've got some important similarities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HIMYM/s/OlluEk2ayd
I think it’s a good movie if you’re in your 20s.
Outside of that it’s a bit ho-hum.
And the ending is silly and pure fairytale.
Nah shits ass
stunning contribution to the discussion.... but based on your comment history, you're probably 12 anyway