First of all, I like your writing, you have a unique style that I can’t quite label, and I love it.

Now, onto the movie. I fell in love with this movie. I know this movie better than I know my own family. I watch it when I’m sick, when I’m tired, when I’m bored, and most importantly, when I’m heartbroken. My friend told me about this movie after what could be called my first ‘real’ break-up. At that time, I couldn’t enjoy anything anymore, everything felt empty to me. That was until I watched this movie. As the plot and the relationship between the characters developed, that horrible sense of emptiness that had become part of me, faded away. This was because I could relate to every single thing Tom had gone through. Every scene in the movie had some level of significance to me. From the first time the couple held hands in IKEA, to Tom’s poetic work after the break-up (“Roses are red, Violets are blue, Fuck you whore.”) to even Tom constantly needing to get advice from his sister just so that he wouldn’t regret any decision made. I was impacted so strongly by this movie that some people in my school who I had never talked to before, already knew 1 thing about me. That I was that dude who really really loves (500) Days of Summer.

I was shocked when I found out the movie had its… ‘haters’ if you will. But now I think I know why you did not enjoy this movie as much as I did, you watched it at the wrong time. I showed my brother this movie, and after the life-altering 90 minutes we had experienced, all he could say was “wow, you’re such a fruitcake, how can you like this movie?” My answer to him and all of you is that you need to watch it at a time where you can relate to Tom’s feelings.

As to the hatred towards Tom’s little sister, the reason she seems so wise is because when you feel like Tom does, deeply in love, you do not act as smartly as you usually would. Anyone you talk to seems like they could tell you tips and advice on how to make the relationship better. I think this is why Tom loved talking to his sister so much, she could give good advice because her mind wasn’t head over heels for Summer, she was more rational.

As to the ending of Summer marrying someone else, I think it was brilliantly done. The movie was trying to show how relationships sometimes just don’t work out. You can look for excuses all you want, but sometimes, shit happens. By having Summer marry someone else, it shows that there was no obvious problem with her and Tom’s relationship, it simply didn’t work out. It wasn’t because Summer wanted to be independent, it. just. didn’t. work. out. And just because it didn’t workout with Tom, it doesn’t mean it’ll never work out. So the ending of having Summer marrying an unknown character seems like the wise option to me, to show how love has a funny way of functioning.

Some of you believe this movie has too many lame parts. Such as Tom dating a girl named Summer, then meeting a new girl called Autumn. However, when you watch this movie and go on the emotional ride, you don’t think of it as lame, you think of it as funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but it surely brought a smile to my face. During my ‘mourning period’ I watched tons of movies that were supposedly meant to make me feel better. None of them had the effect (500) Days of Summer did. It’s lame parts are what make it so great because those lame parts give it a unique aspect that make this movie so great and so helpful.

Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic, but my tip to you is to not watch this movie until the right time. And that right time is after a break-up or whenever you feel emotional emptiness due to romantic failure. Believe me, it will heavily affect how you view this movie.

Summer claims to be a Bruce Springsteen fan, so much so that she names her cat after him. And attempts to sing Born to Run at the bar. But she doesn’t believe in falling in love and she doesn’t believe in fate. Now I am a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and I find it totally unconvincing that someone who loves Springsteen as much as she says she does doesn’t believe in love or fate. That’s pretty much all he sings about (in the earlier albums anyway)! Especially in the album Born to Run, that’s all about madly falling in love with someone and running away with them.

So that really got me. Because they obviously just threw Bruce in there to make her seem somewhat obscure and kooky and yet they totally missed the point. If they are going to be music geeks, at least do it right.

that was the worst part of the movie for me.

There were somethings that bothered me…that it was told entirely from the male perspective, including, as you said, the breaking up Summer into the pieces of her that he likes. It promotes societal standards of beauty (but what film doesn’t…). Summer’s point of view is never really expressed all the way, so sometimes she comes off as flaky and inconsiderate when I would have liked to get her perspective.

But I did really like that Summer had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to express how she felt.

Here’s my post on the matter: http://youngfeministadventures.blogspot.com/2009/08/500-days-of-summer-some-problems-but.html

And YET, I completely agree with every single one of your points. I was particularly annoyed that Summer went on to get married rather than merely stay single (it’s as if she must be totally unattainable for the Gordon-Levitt character to move on to another romance). I can identify with Summer to some degree–it’s oppressive to be someone’s ‘everything’, and I do feel that the film explores the dehumanizing aspects of romance, though it certainly doesn’t go far enough in dismantling them or giving its female character a voice, and perpetuates some of the very problematic narratives it claims to dismantle.

Another reason I enjoyed it: I liked how it played with chronology. The ordering of events I felt was effective in replicating Gordon-Levitt’s character’s subjectivity. Again, this is problematic in that it priveleges the male character’s point-of-view, but I felt it did ultimately undermine some of the mystique by revealing more toward the end of the film.

Anyway, I am not coming in defense of this film ideologically, but I think it’s important to be open about ways in which even a regressive text can be pleasurable. It’s definitely not a film I would whole-heartedly recommend, but it was a nice escapist Sunday matinee.