500 Days of Summer

For my next film review I would like to discuss the film we watched in class called 500 Days of Summer. This film is about Tom played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Summer played by Zooey Deschanel who star in Marc Webb's romantic comedy about a man who falls in love with a woman who doesn't believe in love. Tom is an aspiring architect who pays the bills by writing greeting cards. After being introduced to Summer, it doesn’t take long to see that Tom is smitten and falling hard. All he can think about is Summer and he believes in the fact that everyone has a soul mate and he's found his. Sadly for Tom, Summer is not the same she sees true love as the stuff of fairy tales. But Tom does everything in his power to try and convince her that their love is real and lasting. A main film element that worked for this film is the use of a sort of flash forward. Webb used these time travel shifts to compare and contrast the varying different stages of Tom and summer's emotional rollercoaster of a relationship. I think this technique worked perfectly for this film as it was equal opportunity time shifts Webb did not simply show the happy times but also the bad times which every one who has ever been in a relationship will tell you are just as common. Also small things that helped create a wonderful film experience while watching this was the use of voice over as well as the use of mainly older architecture gave the film a sort of classical feel to it which I enjoyed. Webb really did a great job I think of not making a film that was just a sappy romantic comedy that would be pushed aside and forgotten about but making a classic coming of age story for my generation that we can all relate to.