500 Days of Summer - Fifteen Years Later
Still a favorite, though I'm cringing
500 Days of Summer (2009) is a special film. It's a movie that shaped the aesthetic culture of my adolescence and has continued to influence my media consumption as an adult. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are dreamy leads and their chemistry, despite not ending up together, is undeniable.
When 500 Days of Summer came out in July of 2009, I was thirteen and bored. It was the summer before eighth grade and I was spending a lot of time at home. So, I ventured to the cinema alone. There was a showing for 500 Days of Summer, and I bought a ticket without knowing much about it.
As a rom-com, it's not groundbreaking. Tom is a whiny guy who's desperate for true love. He begins dating Summer, a girl who is upfront about expressing that she's not interested in anything serious. When I first watched this, I knew nothing about relationships and thought Wow, Tom is so dreamy! I also thought Summer was stunning (I still do) and wanted to dress like her—blue dresses, sweater vests, white blouses, Keds slip-ons. And then there was the setting. After watching this, Los Angeles became one of my dream destinations. I loved the year-round sunny weather, the cars, and the palm trees. There's just so much more space in California! I desperately wanted to visit LA. Of course, looking back, this is ridiculous. I was thirteen and living in the middle of Manhattan, but we tend to want what we don't have.
This is where the cringe comes in. Like many others, I thought Joseph Gordon-Levitt was super cute. At the time, it baffled me that Summer wouldn't want to be with someone like Tom. If he's attractive and obsessed with you, what more could you want, right? It took me a few years to realize that Tom is a selfish jerk. There's plenty of commentary on that online, so I won't go into much detail. This article in Nylon explains it well. The Substack post below offers some good insights into Tom’s delusion.
The soundtrack also left an impression. I downloaded it on a torrent service and listened to it on repeat. In fact, I still stream a lot of the songs today. "Sweet Disposition" by The Temper Trap, "She's Got You High" by Mumm-Ra and "Vagabond" by Wolfmother are my favorites.
I joined Tumblr in 2012 in what would be the beginning of a two-year obsession with re-blogging. In my feed, I'd see stills and quotes from 500 Days of Summer. This film was one of many things that Tumblr girls were into, along with the Arctic Monkeys, Alexa Chung, slogan tees, acid wash denim, and grainy photos of the Pacific Northwest. I actually went back on Tumblr while writing this post and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the same content. Ugh, the memories.
Fast forward to July 2024. Twenty-four-year-old singer Matilda Mann comes out with a great song called "Meet Cute." In the music video, she re-enacts the elevator scene from 500 Days of Summer, where Summer expresses her love for The Smiths, thereby sparking Tom's interest in her. There are also re-enactments of iconic scenes from Notting Hill (1999) and Romeo + Juliet (1996). Watching this video made me feel old. It seems we've reached the point where the early 2000s, much like the 90s, are now considered historical fiction. Exciting times.