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

Posted using ShareThis



Go to 500 Days of Summer's Website

Away We Go

Ahhhhhhhhhh. Usually, when I go to the theater, I want to love a film. I really like going to the movies, and I can be entertained by almost anything you put in front of me. However, as much as I may have enjoyed what I just watched, I almost always leave at least a little frustrated about the portrayal of gender. I think, "If they had only NOT done this," or "If they had only been less stereotypical about THAT." After Away We Go, I got to walk out totally happy.

Women are just people in this film, not foils for mens' hijinks or mannequins for clothes or wives, girlfriends, or mothers to more dominant male characters. They actually play roles equal in screen time and complexity to males' parts. Sure, there are flawed female characters. Allison Janney's ridiculous, offensive "Lily" and Maggie Gyllenhaal's judgmental "LN" provide models of the kinds of mother Verona decidedly does NOT want to be. However, in a wonderfully equal way these women are paired with flawed male characters who represent the kinds of fathers Bert also wants to avoid becoming. AND the movie pays as much attention to his conflict as it does hers!

A more interesting, less stereotypical take on gender permeates the film. For example, Verona drives most of the time (and the characters spend a lot of time in the car, so that's not insignificant). In other movies, it's almost always the guy who takes wheel. Also, in a lot of other films (such as Up, the last one I reviewed), the woman is the one who gets upset over fertility troubles and excited about parenting. In Away We Go, the filmmakers undermine that idea again and again. A couple Bert and Verona are friends with seem equally sad about a series of miscarriages and equally committed to raising the children they've adopted. Verona is the one who's hesitant to get married. Bert does most of the preparing for the baby (most adorably, he takes a "family defense class") while Verona just kind of rolls with it. She even says at one point that she doesn't really feel different now that she's pregnant. I could go on and on.

The only conversation I kind of cringed at was the one between Bert and his brother right after the brother had been left by his wife. The brother went on about the kinds of things mothers notice and how his daughter had no chance of being popular because she didn't have her mother to teach her how to dress and to wipe carrot juice off her face before school pictures. It was definitely a little stereotypical, but I realize that he is only one character in a tough moment who expresses one slightly objectionable view of women. Since so many interesting and diverse views of parenting are already represented in the film, I feel okay about his being included as well.

This is a great film for a lot of reasons: great acting, great music, great cinematography, and, most important to this blog, great fairness in its portrayal of females. It's a movie that makes me, a viewer who's very difficult to please when it comes to women in film, feel good on a lot of levels.



***Go to Away We Go's Facebook Page***