In Defense of 500 Days of Summer *Spoilers, of course*

I read this, this morning. It’s well written (everything Doree Shafrir writes seems to be) and it’s an interesting take, but I feel it does the movie an injustice.

SPOILERS. Not too many, but seriously, don’t read this until you see the movie. I don’t want to ruin 500 Days of Summer for you, it was really rewarding for me to see.

A blatant truth is that Summer, Zooey Deschanel’s character, is undefined. I would argue, however, that this is integral to telling the story. Which is, at core, about how Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt) doesn’t get it. Until he does.

The story, for me, is about a guy who wants to fall in love, meets a girl, and does. Without ever really taking the time to be sure she’s in love too. She warns him. She insists she is uninterested in a relationship, is unavailable, is happy being single and having fun. But she’s also clearly somewhat attracted to him, enjoys being wanted, and appreciates him for who he is. I can’t read (fictional) minds, but in my experience people in these situations are caught between justifying it by saying ‘I warned you’ and justifying it by saying ‘(other person) is an adult who can make his/her own decisions’.

She’s not taking advantage of him. She just doesn’t feel it as deeply as he does. And really, there’s no way she can know that where she is isn’t a stepping stone on the path to love, isn’t love as she is able to feel it. When confronted by how unhappy her inability to be certain is making him, she breaks it off. She lets it go, even though there’s comfort in it. And Tom doesn’t understand, because he hasn’t realized that his certainty doesn’t dictate hers.

It takes Tom a long, miserable, self-doubting time to understand. And it’s truly beautiful when he does, because it becomes clear that there’s no bad guy. Both characters were selfish, both pretended the other person was who they wanted them to be, in the place they wanted them to be. If they are guilty, it’s of idealizing one another, which, frankly, is itself an element of love, in any degree.

There’s no betrayal is someone not loving you as deeply, as fully or as certainly as you love them. It feels like it, but there isn’t. There’s just a hard realization that not everything works out, and that being certain in no way dictates the reality of your world.