I seem to be in the unfortunate position at the moment of having a number of friends suffering through their own personal heartbreaks. I myself have been around this block a few times in the not so recent past, and so I empathise keenly, and find myself often thinking about why "it" doesn't work out: why love becomes too difficult, one-sided, or simply, and inexplicably, disappears and is replaced with anger, disappointment, and, most painfully, indifference.
With these things weighing heavily on my mind, I was probably in the perfect frame of mind to see "500 Days of Summer." It is the story of boy meets girl, but as the voice-over points out from the very beginning, it is not a romance.
Tom meets Summer and falls in love. He believes it's fate, that she is his soul mate. Summer wants to keep it "casual," but the two nevertheless become a couple. Tom feels he's met The One, Summer thinks it's nothing serious and doesn't believe in love. Within 300 days, it's over. Within 400 says, Summer is married to someone else. Tom is disillusioned and comes to the conclusion, over a steady diet of Jack Daniels and the Smiths, that the notions he had held dear of true love and soul mates were "bullshit" and it is this realisation, more than Summer, that breaks his heart.
In the final scene of the movie, Tom and Summer meet by chance at one of their favorite haunts. Summer asks Tom how he is coping, and he responds, honestly and angrily, that realising love, fate, destiny and soulmates were all a fiction has been the hardest thing of all. Summer is incredulous. Meeting her husband, she explains, she understood what Tom was talking about when it came to Fate, destiny, and soulmates: when she woke up one day and "knew," she says, she realised that Tom was right.
"Knew what," Tom asks bitterly.
"All the things I wasn't sure about with you," she replies. "You were right, Tom...you just weren't right about me."
And there it is.
So, to my own personal Broken Hearts Club: you weren't wrong, you were just wrong this time. Don't give up. I promise I won't either.
With these things weighing heavily on my mind, I was probably in the perfect frame of mind to see "500 Days of Summer." It is the story of boy meets girl, but as the voice-over points out from the very beginning, it is not a romance.
Tom meets Summer and falls in love. He believes it's fate, that she is his soul mate. Summer wants to keep it "casual," but the two nevertheless become a couple. Tom feels he's met The One, Summer thinks it's nothing serious and doesn't believe in love. Within 300 days, it's over. Within 400 says, Summer is married to someone else. Tom is disillusioned and comes to the conclusion, over a steady diet of Jack Daniels and the Smiths, that the notions he had held dear of true love and soul mates were "bullshit" and it is this realisation, more than Summer, that breaks his heart.
In the final scene of the movie, Tom and Summer meet by chance at one of their favorite haunts. Summer asks Tom how he is coping, and he responds, honestly and angrily, that realising love, fate, destiny and soulmates were all a fiction has been the hardest thing of all. Summer is incredulous. Meeting her husband, she explains, she understood what Tom was talking about when it came to Fate, destiny, and soulmates: when she woke up one day and "knew," she says, she realised that Tom was right.
"Knew what," Tom asks bitterly.
"All the things I wasn't sure about with you," she replies. "You were right, Tom...you just weren't right about me."
And there it is.
So, to my own personal Broken Hearts Club: you weren't wrong, you were just wrong this time. Don't give up. I promise I won't either.