Shurr 1 Whitney V. Shurr Dr. Bottinelli International Cinema 29 April 2010 A Postmodern Love Story In 2009 Marc Webb directed his first feature-length film (500) Days of Summer. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and received much acclaim which led it to be released across the US, parts of Europe, and Australia. Although (500) Days may seem like the typical Hollywood story of boy meets girl, with the normal romantic comedy style, this film is different. It is full of contradictions, uses nonlinear narration, and inserts a wide array of non-diegetic material. This film has many characteristics of post-modernity. Some of these characteristics interpreted in the film are nostalgia, intertextuality, using popular culture to portray a certain message, and concepts from many types of genres and film structures. There are other obvious stylistic notion taken from other films like those by directors Woody Allen and Cameron Crowe. The 2009 American independent film (500) Days of Summer uses postmodern concepts such as the uncertainty of truth, play with narrative form, and references to popular culture to create a new version of the classic Hollywood love story while still appealing to mainstream audiences. In a postmodern world there is no actual reality. (500) Days of Summer begins with a black screen and an author s note to the audience. The note says, Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental... Especially you, Jenny Beckman... Bitch." Right away there is uncertainty as to whether or not the characters that are about to be introduced are based on someone real. There is a narrator of (500) Days who is not seen as a character. It is an omniscient narrator who speaks off and on throughout the film. He is sure to point out to the
Shurr 2 audience that this is not a love story. L.A. seems to be the setting for the film but the greeting card company where Tom works is named New Hampshire Greetings. The city of Los Angeles is seen in a romantic way, the way it is desired to be seen, not the way it is in reality (Gordon- Levitt). The shots only show the streets with no trash and the beautiful views of the area. While shopping in IKEA at the start of their courtship, Tom and Summer play house and run around the model kitchens and bedrooms in the store, acting like a couple (which is what Tom ultimately wants to share with her), although Summer never wants to put a label on their relationship. The protagonist, Tom Hansen, is a 20-something greeting card writer and aspiring architect, who meets who thinks is the love of his life, Summer Finn. Tom is ordinary but gets his moment to be the lead, and he as a whole character, is postmodern. Tom is unsure of the status of Summer s and his relationship for almost the entire movie, adding to the uncertainty of the plot. He believes Summer is the one but his friends and little sister do not. He only remembers the good moments of their relationship at first, skewing the audiences perception of the two characters personalities and why they broke up. Tom spends much of the film in a state of confusion, replaying moments in his head. Although the audience sees Tom s memories, that is not what matters in their relationship because in postmodernism the text is often de-centered. What happens at the margins is more important than what happens centrally. When Tom is mourning over his relationship s end, he lies in bed for days at a time and does not talk to anyone, other than a convenience store clerk from which he buys whiskey and Twinkies, for a long period. According to Norman K. Denzin, intense emotional experiences, [such as] anxiety, alienation, ressentiment, and a detachment from others partly defines Postmodernism. Tom longs for the past and believes it was a better time than the present or future. When Tom quits
Shurr 3 his job writing greeting cards he tells his boss that all the employees are just helping everyone lie. Greeting cards give someone words when they don t know what to say. Tom undermines authority, in this case his boss and the company for which he works. These aforementioned characteristics of Tom s personality are fundamentally postmodern. Postmodern cinema is known to use unconventional narration and (500) Days of Summer is no exception. The entire film is shot in a nonlinear fashion. The first shot of the plot is of Tom and Summer on a bench, which the audience will come to realize is actually day 480. Summer Finn is first seen sitting on a bench next to Tom Hansen. The audience assumes they are engaged to one another because there is a close-up of her hand, with a ring on her ring finger, on top of his. The actual introduction to the character comes a few scenes later. She is on screen the moment Tom first lays eyes on her but then it cuts to an added educational film portraying why Summer is so awesome (Webb). Her yearbook picture is shown and it is almost certainly the actress s real picture. On the average day Summer gets 18.4 double-takes because of her je ne sais quoi. Everyone likes her so much she even gets offered lower rates on the apartments she has rented. None of these things are confirmed later so we are led to believe Tom is imagining this so he will have an explanation as to why he has fallen in love with Summer. Summer s wardrobe throughout the entire film is very specific. It is usually only blues and neutral colors, just like the majority of the scenery in the entire film. The director said, blue is only on screen when Summer is around and it represents freedom [and the] fantastical (Webb). The style of her clothing is reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s but the film seems to be
Shurr 4 set in present day otherwise. Summer s wardrobe choices are also uncharacteristic for the city of Los Angeles. This adds to the confusion of the actual time period and location of the film. Summer, when talking about previous relationships with Tom, mentions that Charlie her love interest in college, was a woman. She glosses over this fact, not making much of it, even though Tom is at first thrown off by it. Summer s sexuality appears to be ambiguous at this point but she ultimately marries a man. There is an ambiguous nature to Summer overall. The audience never gets to know everything about her, only through what Tom and the narrator allows. Also, Summer is represented so thoroughly as the perfect girl for Tom that she is almost hyper-real in the first half of the film. One important characteristic of postmodern cinema is the use of popular culture to create chatter in the audience and create a distraction. Pop Culture is very prominent in (500) Days of Summer for this reason as well as a longing for nostalgia and the past. The thing that brings Tom and Summer together at first is their shared love for the band The Smiths. The 1967 movie, The Graduate, is mentioned within the first 10 minutes of the film. As a young boy Tom misinterpreted it and now has unrealistic expectations about love. Toward the end of (500) Days, there is a split screen as Summer is marrying someone else and Tom is sitting on a bus. Because of the previous mentions of The Graduate, the audience is lead to believe Tom will make it to the wedding on time to stop Summer and they will run off together, just like Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross, respectively. But, in reality (the term used loosely), Tom is not going to the wedding at all and Summer goes through with marrying another man the audience never sees.
Shurr 5 Tom tells Paul, one of his best friends, that he is in love with Summer. At this moment there is an insertion where Tom details some things he loves about Summer. Tom narrates the sequence as there are shots of Summer s hair, the way she licks her lips before she talks, and a black screen when the song She s like the Wind by Patrick Swayze, is heard. Even though Tom is supposed to be talking to Paul at this time when we next see him, as this sequence is wrapped up, he is speaking directly to the camera. The apartment Summer lives in has several pop culture references such as a picture of her favorite Beatle Ringo Starr. There is also homage to Rene Magritte s The Son of Man painting. On Summer s coffee table there is a bright green apple sitting on top of a black bowler hat, imitating the painting by one of her favorite artists. When Summer meets her future husband she says she was in a deli reading Dorian Gray. Tom and his sister Rachel are playing Wii in one scene where he talks about Magritte and J.D. Salinger. Summer hums the theme from Night Rider and loves Bruce Springsteen. There are several scenes that take place in IKEA. There is an obvious excess of pop culture references from beginning to conclusion of (500) Days of Summer. Irony is another postmodern characteristic that is present in (500) Days. Tom believes in love while Summer thinks it s just fantasy. The roles are reversed slightly before the conclusion when Tom decides there is no just thing as fate and Summer has met the man of her dreams, which she never thought possible. Is Summer a closet romantic or does she just change her mind? On the day Tom gives up his idealistic notions about love and destiny he meets the girl who the audience perceives to be the one. This girl s name just happens to be Autumn. At this point Tom stops and smiles to the audience because of the irony and he realizes this signifies a new beginning in his life after Summer.
Shurr 6 The director, Marc Webb, stated that there are several allusions to French New Wave cinema in (500) Days of Summer. When in the car driving, there is a French song playing on the radio. After Summer breaks up with Tom he goes to see a French film with subtitles. Tom imagines himself and Summer in the movie, speaking French. This sequence looks to be set in the 1920s, but then, in an example of pastiche, the shot moves to a beach scene in which Tom is dressed like a knight and plays chess with a child dressed as an angel, adding confusion. (500) Days of Summer is a movie full of postmodern characteristics that still has the draw of a Hollywood romantic comedy. The film focuses on the style rather than its substance, because there is no new substance, only the rejuvenation of the norm. By adding references to the French New Wave film movement (500) Days is given an element of internationalism. Popular culture is abound in this film and with its mentions of bands, movies, and art, displays pastiche in direct relation to Postmodernism.
Shurr 7 Works Cited D enzin, No rm an K. "Blue V el v et: Postmodern C ontradi ctions." Theory, C ulture, and Soci ety. (1 988): 461-4 73. Print. G o r don-levitt, Joseph, P erf. (500) Days of Su m mer. Di r. Marc Webb." Fox S earchlight: 2009, Film. K o hn, Eri c. ""Smart Fl u ff: Ma r c Webb's 500 Days o f S um mer ". I n di ewire. N. p., 13 July 2 0 0 9. W eb. 20 Oct 2010. <http://www.i ndiew i r e. com/article/smart _ fluff_ m arc_webbs_500_da ys _ o f _ sum m er/>.