500 Days of Summer

500 Days of Summer 是我最喜欢的电影之一。今天在Quora 上看到下面这篇文章，觉得写得太好了。

Vedant Das Swain.  Cult Movie Hunter

It's very difficult for me to point out what's the single most meaningful thing about the movie to me. I've seen it at multiple different phases of life (from adolescence through adulthood). Each time  I could empathise with a different bit of Tom's life.

1. Perception (It's all in the head):

From the point of falling in love to falling out of it, one thing that always changes is the way you see the other person.

I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love how she licks her lips before she talks. I love her heart-shaped birthmark on her neck. I love it when she sleeps.

During attraction, a girl's hiccupping laughter might appear cute and her dumbness might seem innocent and cute. But when things start breaking apart, that laughter might make you wanna plug your ears, and that dumbness might seem like a pretentious attention seeking tactic.

I hate her crooked teeth. I hate her 1960s haircut. I hate her knobby knees. I hate her cockroach-shaped splotch on her neck. I hate the way she smacks her lips before she talks. I hate the way she sounds when she laughs.

500 Days of Summer

2. Change (Get with it):

A dialogue in the movie states that people change, which is true. However, according to me, that change is the natural evolution of their personality. Sometimes there are latent traits that come out to the forefront because of certain triggers. Truth be told, we never saw Summer's side of the tale, we never really know how she rationalised her behaviour.

While the movie makes it seem like Summer just wakes up one day and starts behaving oddly. But what the movie beautifully hides are some of the 500 days where we don't know what either of them was thinking.

People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love ones shared wasn’t true and real. It simply just means that sometimes when people grow, they grow apart.

500 Days of Summer

3. Closure (You won't know everything):

Tom's problem wasn't only their break up. His actual problem was his lack of understanding; what went wrong, how did it change so suddenly, why him, why not him. There were so many loose threads that he needed to figure desperately. And till he didn't know the answer for himself he assumed.

The bitter reality, quite dishearteningly, is that we don't always find the answers. Intrinsically we're curious for knowledge, but not every answer will arrive at our will. Moreover, nobody owes you an explanation. And even more importantly, not everything means what you think it does or want it to.

500 Days of Summer

4. Expectation (Don't build castles in the air):

Arguably the most beautiful sequence in the film is the parallel shots of Tom's expectation's versus his reality.

Every time I've seen that scene I've always wondered if reality would have been as miserable if he hadn't hoped for all those things. Once you're too attached to something ( a person, an object or even a thought), its loss is going to hit you hard, especially if its unanticipated.

What should you do then? You hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

500 Days of Summer

5. Recovery (Just a matter of time):

When Tom starts sketching an entire cityscape on his walls it's incredibly powerful. No matter how long and how deep your relationship with someone was, loosing it should be just that. It shouldn't make you lose yourself. If anything, you should find yourself once again if you have to.

That whole architectural/emotional outburst is what leads to Tom getting himself back together. He may not have gotten over her in that very instance, but what he did do was, get over his own sorry state.

500 Days of Summer

About the ending, I've always liked it. Earlier I liked it for technical reasons but as I've grown older I've started appreciating it more.

Remember what his sister tells him in their last scene together?

Look, I know you think she was the one, but I don't. Now, I think you're just remembering the good stuff. Next time you look back, I, uh, I really think you should look again*.

And guess what Autumn tells him the first time they meet?

Girl at Interview: Have I seen you before?

Tom: Me? I don't think so....

Girl at Interview: Yeah, yeah I think I've seen you there.

Tom: Really?

Girl at Interview: Yeah...

Tom: I haven't seen you?

Girl at Interview: You must not have been looking

A reiteration of my 1st point, it's upto you what you choose to see. And quite similar to my 5th point, you need to get yourself out of it. For a matter of fact, he didn't even let the narrator dictate the terms (a pretty subtly meta scene).

That's what I loved about the ending.

If you want, even autumn can be sunny.

500 Days of Summer

*In all the scenes annotated as (x), where x was a number between 1-500, for summer, the background was autumn. Tom didn't notice, nor did most of the audience. He even meets Autumn on a summer day, while he actually met Summer on a winter day. Cosmic significance anyone?