(500) Days of Summer
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Marc Webb
Starring Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Fox Home Entertainment
Release Date: December 22, 2009
The omniscient narrator declares that what we are watching is not a love story, but a story about love. An odd little twist that brings a kind of assurance and authenticity to (500) Days Summer. Once this statement is solidified early on in the film it makes us view the movie in a slightly different way and rightfully so. An original narrative technique is what the film has going for it. It disregards a linear story line but never capitalizes on the true potential the script really has. Many films use discombobulated narratives that are fragmented and dislocated to resemble the emotions its characters are feeling. The split screens and split narratives are too much imbued within stylistic ploys, making each scene that carries these fashionable devices incompetent and never availing.
Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, along with the innovative mind of director Marc Webb, may have dislocate the narrative a tad too much and haven’t peered thoroughly enough into the emotional angst of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a greeting card writer, who is in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), his coworker. This is Tom’s story he tells to his two friends and little sister, in a way that isn’t chronological, his mishaps and successes he has experienced with Summer throughout the 500 days he believed he loved her.
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