THE SAFEST SPACE FOR MY UNSOLICITED OPINIONS

I watched 500 Days of Summer for the first time circa the end of 2009, when it felt like I’d turned into a more grown-up Cher Horowitz, when I assumed my 17-year-old-self had a more mature point of view than I ever had in high school.

That was so quick for my young stupid mouth to claim Summer Finn was the villain of the story. Despite loving the movie and its whole soundtrack, the ending made me underwhelmed as I thought that her character, for me was a lot meaner than what Regina George has ever done to the entire North Shore. I hated her. I really did so that I sent my empathy to Tom Hansen.

Until I bought the DVD and watched it all over again to make it one of my favorite movies of all time as I became older, it’s funny that I’ve slowly seen Summer as a very different person. Put the blame on me. I’d let my teenage self misled for all this time because I hadn’t caught it sooner. Summer has given an upfront clear warning that she just wants to have fun and be friends (with benefits) with Tom. Far from being an anti-hero, Summer is just a realistic portrayal of a blunt and independent quirky commitment-phobe, making her appear very antithetical to Tom, who happens to have his own idealized view of romance, rejects to move on. He’d rather insist on getting Summer back instead. What a truly perfect representation of a person who believes what he wants to believe.

After watching for the third, fourth, fifth, then sixth time, I’m stuck with one scene at the bar when Summer expresses her disbelief in a serious relationship, then Tom casually asks, “what happens if you fall in love?” This is where I can get too much confidence on the line. Tom’s hopeless romantic trait forms him into thinking that he is the right one who can change her perspective about love, very sure he’s different enough for it.

Meanwhile, Summer’s character surprisingly grows on me. I envy her for being bold about what she chooses and what she wants, to be able to learn and overcome the barrier of removing some certain phases of her life that she knows she should let go. Summer shows us that people’s concept of love can change. One day she says love is just a fantasy and hates to be anyone’s anything. The other day, she ends up finding her soulmate while reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. She becomes proof that in real life, we can’t really expect love because it arrives out of the blue. Maybe it’s cool when the same thing might just happen to you. Maybe you meet him/her at your always-go-to-coffee-shop when you order a hot cup of cappuccino while asking for the Wi-Fi password, or at the cinema, or on the train on the way home from work, or when you go crashing the bookstore and being so whiny because the only book you look for isn’t just there, or she/he could just be a friend of a friend, or the person you have known for long.

And I still can’t hate Tom. He teaches me lessons too. Perhaps it’s safe for me to say that he is not really in love with Summer, but only gets infatuated with her and his own idea of romance. The heartbreaking consequence is what happens when you overly expect someone to be in a situation where it’s just you who wanted that, in this case, relationship. We can’t tell that someone is our soulmate just because we have so many things in common or just because they tell us their secrets they never told anyone. We have different people for different situations, don’t we? So why bother it with that true love thingy?

One reason I used to hate Summer is probably because I’m afraid I could’ve just been Tom, while the reason I’m no longer rooting for him is because I’ve finally related with Summer. We have been both of them after all. We got broken, we broke people’s hearts too. That’s I finally understand this movie bravely claims that it’s not a love story, but a story about love.