Last week I whisked myself off to opening night of the Gen Art Film Festival to see (500) Days of Summer, starting Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Director Marc Webb and Gordon-Levitt, or "the guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun" as I like to refer to him, were in attendance to support the film.After Gordon-Levitt briefly pronounced his love for Chicago, the curtains rose and the short with the not so short title The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon was revealed. The basic plot of this movie trailer: a guy is slowly murdered by way of…a spoon. Tries and tries he does to fight back with a chain saw, knife and gun but there’s no stopping the power of the spoon!
Next was the feature presentation of (500) Days of Summer, which debuted at Sundance. The narrator forewarns that the movie you are about to see is not a love story. It starts out on day 500 with a girl (Deschanel), beautifully clad as always, and a boy (Gordon-Levitt), as skinny as ever, sitting on a park bench, hand on hand. The girl has an engagement ring. Then rewind to day 1—the meeting.
Now the audience is captivated and the calendar changes days. This screen is gray with a tree that changes by season, and weather that changes with the mood of the relationship. Gordon-Levitt's character Tom falls for Summer, Deschanel's character. Summer does not reciprocate the love. It is a story about relationships and love, but not between the main characters.
Other fun elements are the costumes and soundtrack. Summer is a retro girl, with 50s hair and clothing, with a little 70s interjected. And the soundtrack is wonderfully fun—a compilation of indie sounds. Though, if the beginning of their relationship were a song, it would have to be "We're Going to be Friends" by The White Stripes (even though this song is not in the movie).
