The summer season provides a multitude of summer blockbusters to choose from. With "Star Trek" and "Transformers 2" taking up most commercial time, many TV viewers have yet to be exposed to the other film that has people talking, "(500) Days of Summer."
"If you're looking for something a little less timpani drums and blood, and more Joy Division and kissing, this is it," Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of the stars of the film, said.
"(500) Days of Summer" is a film about Tom Hansen's (played by Gordon-Levitt) search for where his year-and-a-half long love affair with Summer Finn (played by Zooey Deschanel) went wrong. Alhough it sounds like a typical romance flick, it's not.
"'(500) Days of Summer' doesn't so much avoid cliches as it kind of walks right up to them has a conversation with them, and sort of follows some of them and deviates from others," Gordon-Levitt said.
The film is unique in that it is what co-writer Scott Neustadter calls "an anatomy of a romance. Equal parts autobiography and fantasy. There's music and dancing, split screens, narrators and a cartoon bird. The one thing there isn't is irony."
The film goes back and forth in time, examining the ins and outs of Tom and Summer's relationship, all from Tom's point of view, and all while balancing on the line between magic and reality. The film forgets no detail, from the clothes to the set to the script to the music, and the music is where the buzz lies.
Neustadter believes that every relationship has a soundtrack, as songs are a great way to express feelings that may be hard to articulate.
"Both Tom and Summer have what I consider to be very good taste in music," Deschanel said. "More than anything [the film] is saying that these are sort of how we present ourselves to the outside world. Music isn't just something to be inspired by…our taste in music is a way that we express ourselves. The way we communicate with others is partially our tastes. It was nice to work on a set where music was a very big part of it."
The film's greatest appeal to viewers may be how easy it is to relate to. It was written by two men who experienced feelings similar to Tom's character's, thus resulting in a sincere script put into action by a sincere actor, Gordon-Levitt, who also could relate to Tom.
"The larger than life moments in the movie…all come from a sincere point of view," Gordon-Levitt said. "Even the most surreal parts, like the dance number. Because I know how it feels when you finally got to be with the girl that you've had a crush on for so long, and it feels like that. What it looks like to an objective eye is someone maybe smiling to themselves while walking down the street, but what it feels like is a dance number. And there you have kind of the summary of what '(500) Days of Summer' is. It's more about how it feels.
The film's poster says, "This is not a love story. This is a story about love." "(500) Days of Summer" is a unique twist on the modern love story, with its own style and original portrayal of the way the mind works when it thinks it's in love. If the exciting prospect of seeing something heartwarmingly original hasn't lit your fire, maybe some of the bands on the soundtrack will: The Smiths, Black Lips, Spoon, Wolfmother, Simon & Garfunkel, Feist and Bell & Sebastian. Sold.
"(500) Days of Summer" is set to hit theaters July 17.
