My entire life, I’ve always been drawn to tragedies. There’s something fascinating about movies with endings that aren’t quite sad, but aren’t quite happy either. “500 Days of Summer” fits the bill exactly. While it is a story about love, it isn’t a love story. The narrator is clear about this from the opening scene. The appeal of this movie does not come from the suspense of whether these characters will get together, but rather the hope that they will despite knowing otherwise. For that reason, I find myself enthralled by it and what can be gained from analyzing it.
Throughout the movie, the two main characters, Tom and Summer, have what we would describe nowadays as a situationship. Told in a nonlinear fashion from Tom’s perspective, the audience catches glimpses of this. Though they go on romantic outings, sleep together and generally engage in couple-y behavior, Tom and Summer never define their relationship, as both parties have drastically different views on love. Predictably, this does not end well.
how does this happen?
Our main character, Tom, can only be described as a hopeless romantic. Raised on sad British pop music and romance movies, Tom is led to believe in love as the most beautiful thing in the world — euphoric, brilliant and out there just waiting for him to stumble upon. He has spent his entire life searching for “The One,” only to cross paths with Summer, who feels the exact opposite.
During their first real conversation at the karaoke bar, Summer repeatedly insists that she doesn’t believe in love and doesn’t want a relationship. This is due to a variety of reasons, most notably the fact that her parents got divorced when she was a child. Growing up, Summer never saw love modeled for her the way Tom did, so why should she believe in it?
So it’s no surprise, then, that Summer is a bit jaded on the concept of love by the time she meets Tom. While it might be true that she “isn’t looking for anything serious,” some part of her wants to be like Tom: open to the possibility of love.
This isn’t just me projecting; it’s in the text. After karaoke, when they have that fateful conversation agreeing to disagree about love, Summer tells Tom that she thinks he’s interesting. It’s the first time she really looks at him, because to some degree, she is attracted to the way he sees the world. When he tells her she’s wrong about love, she asks him, “what is it that I’m missing?” It isn’t a challenge, exactly, but Tom sure takes it as one.
He sees Summer, tough and hardened from the world, and foolishly believes that he can change her. “I can fix them,” as we might say in today’s vocabulary. Instead of pursuing someone more attainable, Tom remains in his strange situationship with Summer. Naively, he believes that if he just sticks it out for long enough, eventually she’ll love him the way he loves her, and they’ll live happily ever after.
This is a dangerous line of thinking, and Tom knows it. On multiple occasions, he expresses his frustration with their lack of a label. However, instead of leaving, he continues romanticizing Summer, turning her into someone she isn’t in his head. It doesn’t help when they share moments that reinforce his belief that this dream could become reality. After all, Summer does treat their situationship as a relationship. Functionally, they might as well be dating. She shows cracks in her walls, letting Tom peek inside her world, and he is overjoyed by this development.
Tom is getting closer to winning Summer over, he can feel it. Of course, this is when his fantasy world comes crashing down around him.
what went wrong?
Summer unceremoniously breaks up with Tom on day 290, simply telling him, “I think we should stop seeing each other,” though she still insists that Tom is her best friend. This absolutely destroys Tom, who spends the next hundred or so days in misery. He can’t figure out what went wrong. To Tom, their relationship was perfect, and because the viewer only experiences this story through his eyes, we are inclined to agree. After all, the couple seemed so happy. Summer liked all the things Tom liked, listened to all the music Tom listened to and watched all the movies Tom enjoyed. But as Tom’s younger sister points out, “just because she likes the same bizarro crap you do, doesn’t mean she’s your soulmate.”
On first watch, it can be easy to villainize Summer the way Tom does, calling her “an evil, emotionless, miserable human being.” As a viewer, it is natural to root for a couple to get together. However, upon rewatch and reflection, Tom’s own flaws become more apparent. He obsesses over Summer to an unhealthy degree and expects her to love him in return, despite her consistent communication that she won’t. Deep down, the two of them know they aren’t compatible, but they indulge in the relationship anyway because it is easier than accepting the truth.
One of my favorite scenes in the whole movie occurs on day 408. After experiencing time apart since their breakup, Tom is invited to a party on Summer’s rooftop and believes it is his chance to win her back. Throughout the party, the screen is split in two, with the left side depicting Tom’s expectations, while the right side depicts the reality. In his expectations, Summer spends the entire night with him. In reality, Tom realizes that the party is in fact an engagement party for Summer and her fiancé, and he leaves, heartbroken.
It is a brutal scene to watch. On one hand, the viewer can understand Tom’s pain. We too feel a little betrayed by seeing Summer engaged after all the times she scoffed at the idea. But on the other hand, Tom set himself up for failure. He fell in love with the idea of Summer and mistook that infatuation for true love, which isn’t her fault. It begs the question:
Who was right?
The thing that makes this movie so great is that there is no right or wrong. Just like in real life, there is no villain. The only thing stopping Tom and Summer from being happy together is themselves. You can watch this movie a hundred times, trying to pinpoint exactly where everything went downhill and looking for someone to blame, but the reality is that it isn’t that black and white. In a lot of ways, they are both at fault. Tom shouldn’t have romanticized Summer for who she could be instead of listening when she told him who she was. At the same time, Summer shouldn’t have taken advantage of Tom’s feelings for her to experiment with relationships. In another world, maybe they could have fallen in love, but that isn’t the point of this story.
However, this doesn’t mean that the time they spent together was a waste. The two of them are able to experience a moment of closure near the end of the movie. Sitting on the park bench that was once their spot, Summer tells Tom that he was right — love is real — it just wasn’t her he was right about. Because of her relationship with Tom, Summer was able to open herself up to love, which she found in her husband. While this destroyed Tom at first, he ultimately bounced back. After his fallout with Summer, he quit the job he had no passion for instead investing his time and energy into bettering himself. He cleans himself up, gets back in touch with his creativity and realizes that there is no such thing as fate. By day 500, he is set to get his dream job as an architect, and he is finally ready to move on with Autumn.
While Tom might never understand the inner workings of Summer’s mind or why things didn’t work out between them, he is learning the art of letting go. When Tom tells Summer, “I hope you’re happy” at the end of the movie, he genuinely means it. Though they might not have been meant to be, they were meant to meet. Without the experiences they shared, Tom and Summer would have turned out as completely different people, and I think that’s the beauty of this film. Someone doesn’t have to be the love of your life to be worth loving. In the end, Tom and Summer were both right: yes, love is fleeting, but it is also transformative, and beyond any doubt, real.