500 Days of Summer Essay

500 Days of Summer 500 Days of Summer shows the reality of modern day relationships; sometimes prince charming isn’t very charming at all. Barbie may not be looking for her Ken, and surely none of them have permanent smiles stamped on their faces. The main point of this movie is to analyze about love being a mind and will of its own and to captures an honest depiction of the rise and fall of what is seemingly a perfect relationship. It also emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the difference between the reality and expectation of a relationship.

In the beginning of the movie, the scene reveal how Summer is not looking for a boyfriend and believes that love is a myth, like Santa Claus. Meanwhile, Tom builds up this ridiculously romantic situation between the pair as he pressures Summer to fall in love with him. Often times, one can be overwhelmed by the unwritten rules and regulation of dating. This can be visible when Tom was able to fall madly and hopelessly in love with her so quickly.

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Tom’s blinding devotion to seeing Summer as  “the one” prevented him from seeing the reality of their relationship. He also did not recognize her complexity or the fact that she was not the “perfect” person that he had perceived her to be. It was his inability to relate to her sentiments on a deeper level that doomed their relationship from the moment they first laid eyes on each other. This movie mainly focuses on helping viewers understand the differences between the reality and expectations of a relationship.

In one of the scenes, the screen is split in half to show both the reality and expectation of the current situation and how Summer’s actions towards Tom may be misinterpreted. From the beginning, Summer did say that she had been completely honest with him about her expectations and intentions. However, Tom did have very high expectations. This is made apparent when Summer asks Tom to dance at the end, then he gets upset when he finds out she’s getting married and asks her “Why did you ask me to dance with you? ” But in reality, it was just a dance, and he was making too much out of it.

The director tries to steer viewers in the impression that is a sweet and delightful movie that is an absolute bliss to watch even as they hammer home the awkward and deeply un-movie truth that being in love is a lot of damn work with, usually, little or no reward whatsoever. The entire movie is really viewed through the lens of Tom’s perspective. The jumping back and forth in time symbolizes Tom’s memory of what happened. As the ending narration says, “Most days are not special. They begin and end with no lasting memories being formed. Which is why there are only a select number of days out of the 500 that are showcased here. These are the lasting memories. This is what Tom remembers, the best and the worst. The flashbacks and forwards could easily be an unimportant gimmick, but I think the filmmakers really have a purpose here. The way that it will show a certain scene (like the Ikea scene) from near the end of their relationship, and show how distant the two are; then show the Ikea scene from just a couple days after they’ve been together, creates a very interesting and realistic effect.

They taint the joyful scene we’re about to watch by showing us basically the same scene with the same characters we love, but now we see the pain and heartbreak that goes along with real life relationships. The movie is definitely about love. But it’s also about loss, dreams, and growing up. It also becomes an alarming reminder of how reality and expectations can misleading and cause problems for everyone, skewing our perception of something—or someone—and, in Tom’s case, because he just viewed Summer as this perfect girl, he missed the complexity and didn’t really understand her.

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