Thursday, September 24, 2009

Review: (500) Days of Summer

A few weeks back, I went to see a movie. I liked the movie—a lot. My friend, who came with me, liked it too. I talked to other friends; they liked it too. The problem: nobody could say whether it was any good or not. The movie has a ton of stuff I like: a great soundtrack (which deserves a little essay of its own), great sets (the apartments in the movie approach Woody Allen-ish levels of real estate porn), great clothes, discussions of good urban design, and Zooey Deschanel (whom I’ve been fond of since All the Real Girls). So while I enjoyed the movie, I can’t tell if this was anything more than a superficial aesthetic reaction.

If you haven’t seen the movie, here’s a plot summary (The movie is told non-chronologically, so its almost impossible to spoil): Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a twenty-something bachelor in Los Angeles meets a woman, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and immediately falls for her. They date for awhile, but she, perhaps noticing that he’s far more smitten with her than she is with him, breaks it off. Tom is left to come to terms with the break-up, and to figure out how to move on with his life. As I mentioned earlier, the movie is told non-chronologically, so the story of how Summer and Tom get together is interspersed with his attempts to get over her.

Now I don’t intend to even dip my toes into the philosophy of what makes a movie good or not over and above one’s disposition to like it. Nevertheless, I’ve been doing some thinking, and having talked it over with a couple of good friends, here’s how I think I might be able to solve my dilemma.

1) I think the first thing to do is to just bite the bullet on the aesthetic question. The movie is just plain enjoyable for me, and for people who share my tastes, even if it isn't anything more that that. In a way it’s a throwback to old-style romantic comedies of the 50s and 60s (I'm thinking of the old Rock Hudson/Doris Day dealies). What you have are two really good-looking people, dressed in really good-looking clothes, interacting in really good-looking environments. The end result may be slight, but it’s still completely enjoyable.

2) There’s a bit of narration at the beginning of the movie that the filmmakers seem to think is very important. It showed up in the trailer, and it forms part of the first track of the soundtrack. For this reason its worth quoting in full:

This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie 'The Graduate'. The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parent's marriage she'd only love two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

Now, I think this is deceptive in at least two important ways. Firstly, the narrator gives equal weight to Tom and Summer's respective views on love, but the movie never really leaves Tom's head. Summer’s exact motivations are never really revealed, and she is almost always seen through Tom’s eyes. This seeming underdevelopment of her character has formed the basis of at least one negative review of the movie. Secondly, I don’t really think the movie is really about the conflict of two different views of love. Rather, I think we gain more insight by taking the movie to be an account of two particular people, who ultimately have divergent views of their particular relationship, as well as an account of how one of these people manages to come to terms with its end. I’d argue that thinking of the movie in this way, helps us get past the Summer-as-boogeywoman criticism that was the centerpiece of the negative review mentioned earlier.

3) Although the movie cemented my attraction to and admiration for Deschanel, the real revelation for me in the movie was Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance. I’d always thought of him as the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun. But here he makes for a rather good leading man. This is apparently not the only time they’ve paired off on screen, and I’d like to see them do something else together—maybe a thriller or a noir detective story (Gordon-Levitt has already tread some of that territory in the aforementioned Brick).

So is (500) Days of Summer a good movie? Well yes and no. It’s certainly well made; its directed with flair, its well-acted, and (for the most part) its well written. But unlike the best movies of the genre (Annie Hall (which shares its plot), High Fidelity, or even All the Real Girls) I’m not sure there’s anything going on below the surface. As such, if you don’t happen to share my tastes, and God knows most people don’t, then there isn’t a lot in the movie to recommend it. But as for me, I think I think its time to give up the game of justification and say “I just like it. Ok?”

AeoA

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Modern Noir Casefiles #1

Casefile: Brick (2005)

Call it modern dress Shakespeare, but nix the Shakespeare. Take a story straight out of Dashiell Hammett and set it, say, at a high school in late 90s California. Bingo—it’s a great match. After all, ain’t a school like a city? You get all the usual types: the hustler, the tough guy, the loser, the dopehead. The teachers are the cops. The weird, smart loner is the detective. Nix the fedoras and the coats, and bring on the cell phones. All the pieces fit. Only it don’t wash. Why are some of these kids acting and talking like 1920s gangsters? The flick doesn’t really tell us anything about high school or hard boiled crime. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it ain't fun; it just ain’t much more than that.