{500} Days of Summer... (the girl not the season)

I can't even tell you how hard it was for me to get my hands on this movie. I have been trying for the last month  to rent this movie or catch it on TV without any success. I was really excited to see what this movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Dechanel was all about, and it did not disappoint. I am a sucker for any more that starts out by telling me that it is not a love story. (Sometimes the sap happy just gets to be to much... *gag reflex*) This movie really set itself apart. It didn't do so by any original story line, but in the way Marc Webb (director), Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber (writers) were able to put onto the screen that all familiar roller coaster of love. Levitt has shown that he can definitely carry the action/suspense film and the light romantic comedy roles. 

Tom's relationship with Summer touches on all of those important relationship moments. The moment that you should have made a move but you didn't, the first time they grab your hand, that moment you realize that they could hurt you, that moment in which all in the world is aligned and you want to hug everyone because they should be as happy as you. It brings back all of those open wounds of the time you where dumped. It is the perfect embodiment of all relationships.
What I loved about the movie is that it is not told in complete chronological order.  It starts at the end of Summer and Tom's relationship and jumps around. This would normally make me feel like my head was spinning, but this was the perfect story telling technique for this film was trying to say. We see that Tom is so devastated by his break-up with Summer, and like most people he remembers all of those good times that they had together. The first half of the movie is so heavy in the happy moments that it is hard to understand how we end up at the unhappy beginning (well...ending). It is near the last half of the movie that Tom begins to take a closer look at some of the "happy moments" and see that maybe they really aren't all that happy. Isn't that what everyone does when a relationship ends? Especially when you are the one who was dumped? It becomes a what happened, we were so happy, it came out of no where... when really the signs were right in front of your face you just didn't want to admit it to yourself.

And the narrator was right, it wasn't a love story. I thought that the over all theme of the movie is that everything in life happens for a reason. (this is the thinking that gets me out of bed sometimes) Each person that comes into your life helps to move you to your next phase in life, and sometimes that person is not part of that next phase. They might not be your soul mate, but it doesn't make them any less important. So it may not be a love story, but it is a story worth watching for sure.