Recently I re-watched (500) Days of Summer and had the strangest experience with it. If you’ve never seen the film, you likely won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. If you have seen it, depending on the type of person you are, you’ll either think I’m dead on or dead wrong. So let’s jump right in: (10) Observations about (500) Days of Summer. I’m going to try to start with the more brief points and get progressively more wordy; we’ll see if I succeed.

1. Color theory: With the exception of one scene, Summer is the only character to wear blue. This is done to visually set her apart, the way our narrator (Tom, not the literal Narrator character) sets her apart from everyone around him.
2. Soundtrack: The soundtrack features some of my favorite artists and songs, although I couldn’t tell you whether the chicken or the egg came first, so to speak.
3. Cinematography: (500) Days of Summer is one of the most aesthetically pleasing films I’ve even seen, second only to the 2005 Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly.
4. Story theory: Like Deadpool and Memento, the film utilizes nonlinear storytelling masterfully. In fact, all three films arguably flow better in this manner than they would have chronologically.
5. Culture: Every now-mainstream hipster trend makes an appearance in this film. The indie community stopped being “indie” when all these indie films made it big. (See also: Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Ruby Sparks, Once, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, et cetera ad infinitum.)
6. Also culture?: There is a brief scene in which the Narrator tells us Summer’s measurements. Not only are these measurements almost certainly nowhere near actress Zooey Deschanel’s at the time, they are not even accurate or realistic. She’s stated to be of average height and weight, and above average shoe size. Numerically, she is 5’5”, 121lbs, and wears a size 7(?) shoe. Using country average data, average height in the United States is 5’4” (two inches down from the last time I checked, which I’ll count as a victory for my short self) and average weight is 162lbs. Average shoe size is 9. (Sidebar: I just looked up Zooey Deschanel’s measurements, which do indeed check out to be 5’6” and 121lbs… according to this website. If I were a celeb, I’d want to perpetuate that, too. But I’m skinnier and shorter than Zooey, and I’m 125lbs. That BMI is just unhealthy.)
7. Story theory: To keep things “consistent” and recognizable, several similar sequences are repeated and contrasted. Tom’s description of what he loves about Summer is echoed later when he describes his hatred of those same qualities. He wants Summer back to badly that he tries to recreate with his new blind date those events that were most meaningful to him and Summer. Even the end of the film suggests the entire cycle starting over and repeating.
8. On that subject, the Expectations/Reality sequence is possibly the best part of the film. In addition to probably being the origin of that meme, the entire sequence is arranged to have only one “interesting” thing on the screen at a time. So, one panel will show something largely unchanging, while the other will feature something important. The sound, too, is panned slightly to to draw your attention to whichever panel is most important at any given moment. And on the occasions when Tom’s expectations do line up with reality, the same identical shot is used in both panels to eliminate any possible confusion. I think it’s my favorite sequence in any movie ever.
9. Much in the way that Tom can only remember the positive things about his relationship with Summer, I only was able to remember the positive things about this film myself. As I mentioned before, it had been quite some time since I’d seen it last. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been in so many different relationships and finished school since then, but (500) Days of Summer seriously depressed me this viewing. Which brings me to…
10. Tom and Summer are both terrible people. It’s an inarguable fact. We are supposed to identify with Tom, since he is the protagonist, and think that Summer is evil. Or a robot. Or an evil robot. And for a long time I did identify with Tom. He was so romantic, he was just looking for love, and Summer was so flippant about their relationship. Just because you start as “just friends” doesn’t mean you necessarily must end that way! She just didn’t know a good thing when she had it.
    
    Then for a while I identified with Summer. She made her intentions perfectly clear from the beginning. How hard is it for Tom to understand “just friends?” Tom would be the first to know if she changed her mind. They may have had a few common interests, but they really weren’t that compatible overall. Tom needed to stop deluding himself, because their relationship was not that great.
    
    I don’t know when whatever shifted in me did so, but on this latest viewing I hated the both of them. Tom was delusional, but Summer was selfish. Tom had her up on this ridiculous pedestal, completely romanticizing everything about her, even going so far as to project onto her qualities she did not actually possess. Summer, meanwhile, behaved completely impulsively, doing anything and everything she wanted with no thought whatever to the consequences.
    
    Summer was probably going to put her husband through the same crap she put Tom through – look at that timeline! They barely knew each other a few months before getting hitched. And Tom was more than likely to follow the same cycle of obsession and hatred with Autumn.
    
    In the special features on the Blu-ray, there’s a segment in which the filmmakers discuss whether each of them is a “Tom” or a “Summer.” We shouldn’t want to be a Tom or a Summer. If anyone we should want to be Mr. Vance, or Millie, or Matthew Gray Gubler’s character, or just about any of the other myriad of secondary characters in the film. Though significantly less developed, at least they aren’t entitled, self-righteous jerks.
    
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gone on record on multiple occasions stating that he’s alarmed by women who say they’re “looking for their Tom.” He says that Tom is unbalanced, that he is not at all someone to emulate either in oneself or in one’s partner. Frankly, I agree with him. But don’t set out to be or find Summer, either.