The Top 10 Scenes in (500) Days of Summer

To years ago today, (500) Days of Summer was released on DVD.  I headed to Walmart at midnight with two of my best friends in tow who hadn't seen the movie before, and we laughed and cried our way through it immediately.  That day, I watched it twice more, and at least five more times before the holidays ended.  I love a lot of movies, but I've never loved another movie like I love (500) Days of Summer.  It has served as a huge inspiration to me - the way it flips the generic elements of romantic comedy to new ends - representing the sort of movie I hope to write someday.  Built on the framework of Woody Allen's classic Annie Hall (another of my favorites), (500) Days of Summer is a sort of neo-radical romantic comedy, in that it neither provides us the happy ending we want nor denies us a generous glimmer of hope at its conclusion.

It may be off to celebrate (500) Days on the anniversary of its DVD release rather than in the summer when it hit theaters, but isn't it nice to take a reprieve from the bitter winter weather for the warmth of summer, romance, and Los Angeles?  I think so.

(500) Days of Summer is full of fantastic scenes, but here are the ten best.  (If you've yet to see the film, 1) What the hell? and 2) Don't read this until your sorry plight has been corrected.)

1. The Dance number

Every time I watch this scene, I laugh to the point of crying.  It's similar to the "How Do You Know" number in Enchanted in its over-the-top grandeur and eye-popping color coordination, but when a big dance number breaks out in a non-musical, there's an element of surprise and pure bliss that's hard to rival.  The little details add so much: the cartoon bluebirt, Harrison Ford in the car window, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's little shimmy as he walks past the fountain, all to the wonderful music of Hall and Oates, who were originally intended to make a cameo appearance in the scene.

Now only does the dance provide the biggest laughs of the movie, but it also fleshes out Tom's character (and dilemma) in a wonderfully cinematic way.  By demonstrating Tom's high after finally scoring with summer, the film shows the audience to a comical degree what a rom-com-addled mind Tom is operating with.  It's an ecstasy that transforms the world to the point that strangers want to dance with you in the street.  It's a very exciting reality - and a dangerous one.

Scott Neustadter, who co-wrote the film with Michael H. Weber, says of the dance number: "We wanted to capture the feeling...like you're on top of the world.  That's the feeling you get.  The world has just opened itself to you, and that's what we were trying to capture.  One of the things we were trying was the kitchen sink, anything-goes mentality.  We wanted to do a musical number, we wanted to do a ninja battle - at one point we had a ninja battle."  A ninja battle would've been an interesting addition, indeed.

2. Expectations vs. Reality

This scene is the film in microcosm.  The theme of being influenced by pop culture to always expect a happily ever after is brilliantly depicted by the use of split-screen, and heart-breakingly accompanied by Regina Spektor's "Hero."  In the film's introduction, we're told that Tom misread The Graduate as having a happy ending.  It seems like a minor instance of misguided romanticism, but in this scene, we see the perfection of Tom's disease.

Not only do the expectations and reality sides of the screen represent their labels - they also represent how the scene would likely unfold in a typical romantic comedy vs. in (500) Days of Summer.  The happy ending Tom so desires is one he can only find in the movies but, ironically, can't find in the movie of which he is a part.  The juxtaposition of scenes is so effective at rapidly growing the distance between what Tom (and, presumably, the audience) wants and what the situation actually is.  When Summer's ring is finally shown, with the music matching perfectly (you can really tell director Marc Webb started his career doing music videos), reality comes crashing down on Tom, and the harsh truth of the film is reinforced to the point where it can no longer be hoped against - for the audience.

3. IKEA

Tom and Summer's first date to IKEA is full of great moments, such as the Chinese family in the bathroom, Tom getting excited about his dinner of bald eagle, and Summer's adorable pose when she realizes the sink is "broken."  But what makes the scene really great is that it proves that Summer isn't the villain.  It's in the IKEA bedroom that Summer tells Tom she doesn't want a relationship, that she wants to keep things casual.  Tom says that's fine, but obviously, he wants more.  It's the beginning of the split between Tom's expectations and reality that complicates the rest of the film.  I'll come back to this in #10.

4. The Penis Game

This scene makes the list more for being purely entertaining than being thematically relevant, though it does show the easy closeness of Tom and Summer's relationship.  The two o them playing the penis game in the park is one of the funniest scenes in the movie.  The kids running by, the exclamation of Tourettes, and the final scream are all hilarious.

5. Karaoke

In the karaoke scene, the characters of Tom and Summer really start to come out, especially as they relate to each other.  Tom's hopeless abundance of romanticism meets Summer's independent lack thereof, and when she asks what she's missing, you just want Tom to say, "Me."  Opposites meet and, later on, attract, and it's a dangerous meeting.  This exchange provides the groundwork for the bittersweet relief that follows on Day 488 (see #8), when Summer admits that Tom was right all along.

The musical performances are also great, especially Tom's take on "Here Comes Your Man," which can be downloaded in its all-too-short entirety on iTunes.

When Tom and Summer put McKenzie in the cab, the scene gets even better.  The relationship blossoms in a small but believable way.  This is one of the instances of (500) Days choosing realism over generic convention.  There's no rush to the first kiss, though it comes soon enough in the awesomely awkward copier scene.

6. Tom Quits His Job

Besides the laughs provided by Tom's disgust at the cat cards and proclamation that, if he was sent a mushy Valentine's Day card, he would eat it, this scene provides a sense of why (500) Days of Summer is so exciting and fresh as a romantic film.  Most films feed the false sense of romance that many people believe in and (more disturbingly) want to believe in: that things just happen magically and everything will work out in the end.  (500) Days rages against this state of mind, both through its visual tricks and the brutality of its writing, which is at full force in this scene.  Love doesn't always work out, but thankfully, sometimes it does.

This scene is a huge turning point for Tom, who has graduated from his rose-colored glasses to the opposite extreme, adopting Summer's former dismissive feelings on love and adding a healthy dose of bitterness, only to be challenged by her again on Day 488.

7. The Love Documentary

This scene is an interesting break in the movie, as McKenzie, Paul, Vance, and Tom address the camera directly, talking about what love means to them.  Two things that make this scene really great: Tom's confused failure to express what he's thinking culminating in a resigned sigh, and Paul's realization that Robin is better than the girl of his dreams.  It's one of the most touching lines of the movie, and yet another affirmation that reality is better than fantasy colored by movies, music, and the like.

8. Day 488

Perhaps the toughest scene the watch in the movie, it's also one of the most imporatnat, and one that can be read in two very different ways.  After Summer's wedding and Tom's decision to pursue architecture, the two come together again on the bench in Angelus Plaza (actually Angel's Knoll for tourists who want to pop a squat).  Tom and Summer have swapped views on romance, with Summer asserting that Rom was right all along, that love does exist, that it had to have been fate that her now-husband walked up to her and asked her about The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Then, she rips Tom's (and our collective) guts out: "It just wasn't me you were right about."

The scene allows Tom to find closure, in that his previous beliefs are affirmed by someone who had previously been dedicated to the opposite stance.  It allows Tom to really move on to (literally) the next season of love, Autumn.  On the film's commentary track, the filmmakers discuss the possibility that this scene is a fantasy scene in the vein of the dance number, that Summer didn't actually come.  If that's the case - it's up to the viewer to decide - it has huge implications for both Summer's and Tom's characters (maybe she's a bitch, after all).  While the filmmakers opted not to have Summer's character fade away and thus cement in that reading as being "correct," they tend to think of the scene as Tom's fantasy.

9. The Summer Effect

This scene shows why Summer is so magnetic - it's science!  It almost provides a sense of relief, as it seems inevitable that Tom would fall in love with her.  Maybe his feelings weren't real, or, if they were, it had to happen: she's Summer, and Tom's a guy.  In the words of the screenwriters, it's "a very sort of statistical point of view of why, empirically, this woman is attractive."  By cataloguing Summer's irresistibility, not only does Tom's infatuation make sense, but the viewer falls for her, too.

10. The Introduction

The narrator's opening speech is key to the film because of the relationship it establishes between the viewer and the movie.  (This is where #3 comes in.)  Just as Summer tells Tom that she doesn't want a relationship up front, the narrator warns the audience from the get-go that this isn't a love story.  But still, foolishly, even inevitably (based on all the other films and such we're exposed to as consumers, just like Tom), we hold out hope anyways.  We still believe that Summer and Tom will end up together, because that's how movies are supposed to end.  The movie is to the viewer as Summer is to Tom, up front about what it wants and what it is, but the warnings fall on deaf, unwilling ears.  It's a brilliant parallel that lets the viewer really feel for Tom and understand his sometimes-frustrating character.