500 Days of Summer

After hearing mixed reviews from family and friends, I went into 500 Days of Summer cautiously optimistic. I ended up really liking the film. I'm not enthusiastic about it like I was with Away We Go, but it was a fun movie that only posed a couple of minor issues for me as far as portrayal of gender is concerned.

The plot's fine and even a little bit unexpected. The jokes are funny enough. The sets are interesting to look at. The costumes are stylish, although I'm not sure Summer and Tom dress like typical Los Angelans. (I thought Portland or Seattle at first. I wonder if the costumer was more interested in putting hip clothes on the actors and less about what would be true to their characters. But what do I know? I'm from the Midwest.) The music is good. Also, I'm pretty sure about 80% of the people in the theater, guys as well as gals, left feeling a little bit in love with Zoey Deschanel.

On the gender front, I'm glad I watched 500 Days of Summer and Casablanca back-to-back because it highlighted for me an important distinction between these two films and, hopefully, between the way females tended to be treated in popular culture then versus how we can hope they'll be treated more often in the future. In Casablanca, the women are super passive, unable to decide anything for themselves - even if they want another drink or not - while their men make all the major decisions about issues like war, peace, and love.

In 500 Days of Summer, the girl is the one with her act together - the one who has to "do the thinking for both." Tom is pathetic. He works at a job he hates because he's not brave enough to go for one he really wants, takes advice from his kid sister, and waits around for the girl of his dreams to create his life for him. Summer, on the other hand, feels no need for a relationship and has a fascinating inner life of which we really only get tiny glimpses (as does Tom). Just compare the couples' apartments: Tom's is...well, I don't actually remember much about Tom's apartment. Only that it's boring. Summer's is quirky - filled with knick-knacks, color, paintings. She so clearly knows what she likes and who she is that Tom is obviously, from the beginning, not a match for her.

So that's my general impression. Here are a couple little loose ends I feel I need to mention, though.

1) One of Tom's friends makes obnoxious gay jokes all the time. It is unbelievable to me how common "You're gay" or the related "You're a girl" insults still are. I think they're a too-easy, way too-offensive route to a laugh. I will say that 500 Days does eventually expose this character as the loser he is, especially in the love department, hinting that that kind of immaturity isn't usually appreciated. However, people around me in the theater were pretty quick to laugh at him, so maybe I'm being naive.

2) The movie suggests that Summer might not want a relationship because of her parents' divorce. I guess you could argue, then, that she isn't as independent as she claims she is - she's just afraid to get involved because of her personal history. Furthermore, Summer ends up getting married at the end of the film. The authors of some reviews I've read have a problem with this and feel it undermines the character we've gotten to know all along. I don't really agree. I know a lot of people, females and males, that THINK and SAY they never want to get serious, get married, have a family, but it eventually, unexpectedly happens to them.

I was, however, somewhat taken aback by the very traditional hints we got about Summer's wedding - the guy proposes with diamond ring and she wears a blusher, really old-fashioned to my feminist self but maybe just another hipster fashion choice - at the ceremony. Anyway, I'm not 100% sure what to do with the Summer-getting-married plot twist, but I think I'm okay with it.

3) I say above that I hope females are gradually being portrayed more positively in film. "Hope" is the key word there. I'm not totally optimistic this trend is advancing fast enough. The article below is a really good read on how we still keep our movie heroines dependent on men to do their thinking for them:

Shrew vs. shrewd -- chicagotribune.com

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