The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

This movie is a deconstruction of love after the fact. And that’s my line, I plan on using it again for my own gain, so no stealing it. Anyway, this movie picks out the little things that make and break a relationship. Some scenes take only 15 seconds but that is all we need sometimes to capture a look that says it all. I would rather a subtle and short scene that is meaningful over a belaboured, 5 helicopter shot, expository lump of dreck any time. The global box office doesn’t agree with me, but surely, hopefully (please) some people agree with me.

There is a smoke screen of indie cool that may run the risk of alienating certain mainstream viewers who hated the schtick and character tic replacement of real characterisation development seen in films that have an eponymous mouthy teen doing her best to stand out from the crowd and in doing so seems to become just another panel of the ‘individual’ wallpaper of teens seen everywhere separating themselves from the herd by joining another herd. Trust me about 500 Days of Summer though, no characters here use a hamburger phone just to get a head above the crowd. There’ll be no pipe sucking nor reclining chairs laboriously placed onto front lawns. Here we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom Hanson. Hanson is a real guy who you’d find in any book store wishing he could be the stud of the nightclubs. He’s simple, shy, nerdy, and very much just awesomely average. He wants to be an architect but is stuck writing gift card messages instead. His mates are average (not Hollywood average but real world average) blokes who hang out at an awesome cafe that has functioning old schoole flat bed arcade games as tables. These retro set pieces never take centre stage or get thrust in your face to reinforce how ‘cool’ and ‘quirky’ these guys are. The scene simply is because that’s where guys like this would hang out. Not to soak up the cultural street cache they think it will bring them but simply because they enjoy it. It is this sort of natural vibe that permeates most of the film.

Hanson meets Summer but that’s not where this fractured narrative begins. The story jumps around a lot but we are always informed of the exact day by a place card. Seeing how things end up doesn’t ruin anything because it’s the journey that matters, and even then only little snippets of that journey. The essence of the couple is boiled down into glances and songs and the little chats that pepper a relationship and always mean so much. Each conversation means so much because Hanson is such an open character; he wears his heart on his sleeve and has a habit of picking at it often enough so it’ll never heal. He feels more than most men feel then can or admit they do, and he reads into every little thing like an astronomer searching for a sign of life around a distant star. Hanson even admits that an early screening of The Graduate warped his sense of love in life and we get a lovely homage mise en scene right before he sleeps with Summer for the first time.

Where Benjamin Braddock wasn’t happy with anything, Hanson spends the next morning in an awesome dance routine that starts off simple, almost subtle, but then will break a smile across the crustiest of faces. It’s this ability to try different innovations, present scenes in different genres, that makes the collective work. We see Hanson viewing his break up like a very bleak foreign film; the narrator instructs us as much as tells us, he’s more documentor than guide; the author outs a supposed ex in an on-screen disclaimer before the movie even starts. The scene that worked the best for me was a very thoughtful, and strangely haunting, split-screen that showed an encounter through two lenses, Hanson’s expectations and the reality that slaps him instead. It shows exactly how Hanson interacts with the world around him.

Zooey Deschanel’s Summer us the indie chick that she’s constantly reborn to play, but the movie isn’t about her. She is simply a catalyst for Hanson’s emotions, as most girls seem to be. In saying that, Summer does dhow us the flip side to the coin. She is reticent to be in an actual relationship and she doesn’t appear to believe in love. She can’t understand Hanson’s blind faith and he can’t understand how it hasn’t convinced her yet. Love is the paranormal activity and the skeptic and believer can only agree to disagree on the half-sunk platform of false logic on which they find themselves.

That’s the lesson for the viewer; love is a fickle mistress and yet we all devote our lives to its discovery, entrapment, and continual mining. Love has more followers than all religions and it’s started more wars but it’s also created more sonnets and fueled more smiles. In the end, it does exist but you never know how deep the vein you tap will run but who cares? It’s all worth it in the end no matter what.

I rate this film highly, for anyone who believes in love, or strictly doesn’t. It’s well crafted, it’s funny, it’s touching, and most of all it is thoroughly enjoyable. There’s plenty to like about the movie, but also plenty more to love.

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: movies