MovieChat Forums > (500) Days of Summer (2009) Discussion > Few Narratives are as Disjointed as This...

Few Narratives are as Disjointed as This

posted 10 years ago by chrismovieman
3 replies | jump to latest

I just wanted to say that I saw this movie recently, and I enjoyed it. Both actors gave a solid performance and even the side characters were interesting and memorable. The story is an interesting one and it seeks to take a departure from more stereotypical romantic comedies. I liked it.

But the fact that it was so jumbled really hurt an otherwise good narrative story. Tarantino and others deviate from chronological story telling alot, and often to great effect. (Stanley Kubrick did this long ago with an early, and underrated film called "THE KILLING") But I've honestly never seen ANY movie that had a narrative that was so jumbled, so far out of chronological order, and seemingly deliberately designed to confuse the audience and throw us into a jumbled mess, desperately trying to put the puzzle pieces together of a story and characters that is otherwise good. This is Tarantino on steroids. We're not talking about 2-3 scenes that are out of chronological order. We're talking about a film that has almost NO SCENES in chronological order!

The only other film that I've seen that can compare is one of Christopher Nolan's early works "MEMENTO". But frankly, the jumbled story, told out of chronological order, works much better because its a film about a brain damaged character who has a form of amnesia.

As for the film's story and characters, while its MOSTLY clear when things are going well in their relationship, and when things are going badly in their relationship, there were a few times when I really got thrown off and wasn't sure WHERE, chronologically, we were in the story. There's a line late in the film, after they watch 'THE GRADUATE': "I have an idea: Pancakes!" and its meant to connect things to the earlier scene in the film but I was left confused the first time I saw this scene. I thought to myself, "Are they going to the movies together even though they are now broken up? Hmm, seems strange that she's seeing a movie with him when she's married/engaged. Maybe THATS why she looks uncomfortable?" Turns out, I just got thrown off by the jumbled, disorganized, out-of-chronological order format.

DAY 450
DAY 3
DAY 70
DAY 1
DAY 498
DAY 12

Seriously, its like a bad joke. How does this strengthen the narrative? How would the film have suffered if they had put at least a few of the days in chronological order? I can only assume that this was an artistic choice on the part of the writer/director but I just didn't get it. Otherwise, I really did enjoy the movie.

[–] citycity123 10 years ago

I didn´t have a single problem with the non-linear storytelling. It was refreshing and I enjoyed this stylistic device a lot.

[–] chas437 9 years ago

Yes, it worked perfectly an the fate of the film depended on it.

Totally disagree with the OP, and this is not a romcom, its deadly serious to my eye.

[–] resmat-1 10 years ago

The non-chronological structure is meant to evoke the way we remember our relationships as a series of moments. It's very much an artistic choice.

I actually think the film does an exceptional job of being accessible despite its fairly unconventional structure. When you break it down, though, the structure isn't that unconventional and a lot of the scenes are in order.

First half: the beginning of their romance and the build-up to their break-up are told in parallel and it's never hard to tell where we are in the timeline. Second half: we follow Tom as he goes to the wedding, has an emotional breakdown and eventually rediscovers his passion for architecture.

The only things that might complicate this are the comedy vignettes scattered throughout the film and the two flashforwards at the beginning of the film (Tom and Summer on the bench; Rachel cycling to Tom's place to comfort him).

Memento this isn't.