500 Days of Summer- Tom vs Summer, Who Is Justified?

In this analysis we are going to take a closer look at a film that came out 12 years ago called 500 Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It is a romance/drama/comedy which tells the story of a young man and woman of which their relationship is unclear and undefined and my job is to try and detemine if it was anyone’s fault that their “relationship” turned out the way it did. Let me start by saying that since the core of this film revolves around a relationship, that it will be complex to navigate because emotions and feelings are not absolute nor black and white and there are many variables when it comes to relationships. The film is, of course, open to interpretation. We will study Tom Hansen and his strong desire to get with the girl, Summer Finn, and all the moments that they spend together. The film uses time-jumps and that is shown with numbers representing how many days go by since Day 1, when Tom first lays eyes on Summer. As the narrator states in the beginning, it is not a love story but that technically isn’t fully true but it’s not false either. I have read many interpretations, both vouching and speaking against both characters with great points from both sides. Let it be said that because I am a male it will be easier to understand Tom’s point of view and I may be slightly biased but I will try to be as objective as possible and see the situation from both points of view.

Before the main plot begins, the audience is told that Tom watched the film The Graduate when he was about a preteen and cemented specific notions and expectations about relationships since then. For those unfamilar with the plot of The Graduate (even I myself haven’t seen it and needed to read the plot), it is essentially about boy meets girl and boy gets girl after all these obstacles and so Tom thinks that even after any obstacles that life throws in his way, that he will still be able to win the girl if he tried hard enough. Summer, on the other hand, experienced her parents’ divorce and came to believe that true love is a fantasy and isn’t meant to last.

We start with Day 1 where Tom lays eyes on Summer for the first time and is immediately infatuated with her. His mission from that point on is to make her his. He is convinced she is the girl of his dreams. During that first week, he finds out she likes the band The Smiths (his favourite) and he becomes ecstatic and excited by this prospect. They get acquainted at a weekend party where he gets to know her a little better and a few days later he’s telling his sister Rachel (Chloe-Grace Moretz) how he thinks he and Summer are very compatible because they had so much in common to which his sister responds that just because she’s into the same things Tom is doesn’t make her his soulmate to which Tom sounds perplexed and dumbfounded, indicating that he probably thought this is all that it took to score the girl. 22 days in when Tom asks Summer how her weekend was, she responds in a tone that makes him think she had a very good time with another guy at which Tom assumes he’s defeated and has no chance. He’d also been trying to flirt with her for the first 3 weeks to which she took no hints to.

The first time anything monumental happens is at a workplace get-together at a bar one weekend almost a month into the journey. There he learns, when Summer states explicitly, that she is not comfortable being anyone‘s girlfriend and would rather stay single and independent. She brings up her belief about lasting love being a fantasy, stemming from her parents’ divorce. Tom insists that true love is real and they both agree to disagree. At the end of the outing, Summer finds out Tom likes her and she tells him, SOBER mind you, that she’d like for them to just be friends. 3 days later on Day 31, Summer kisses Tom at work. This is the deathtrap. Why in the world would you kiss someone who you know likes you and you clearly told them you just wanted to be friends unless your feelings changed in 3 days? 3 days is plenty time to think about how you really feel about someone so is that what happened? I assume that’s what happened.

Already 3 days later, the two are “hanging out” or something. Dating, or something. An item, or something. It is never explained exactly what they are. I guess they just flowed into being “something”. Tom should have questioned what was happening at this point already but I guess he was just happy that he had “something”. What in the world was Summer doing though? There’s a moment where she tells him that “this is fun, you’re fun” and that she’s not looking for anything serious. This should have been a warning sign for Tom but since he’s never had any girlfriends (that we know of), he must’ve assumed it was going peach perfectly and that it was going to evolve into something more defined. Had he a little bit more experience with girlfriends, he might have known that Summer was not ready to go steady and he likely would have moved on. Summer does girlfriendy things with Tom like cuddling and holding hands and eventually having sex together and Tom, understandably, feels like a new man, and, like Tony the Tiger says, grrrrrrrreat!

3 months in, the “couple” are comfortably watching pornos now and taking showers together. A week later, Tom is showing Summer different buildings around the city explaining why he admires their architecture and his favourite spot in the city, and at about 3.5 months in, Summer takes Tom to her apartment where she confesses that she’s never done that before and confides things in him that she’s never told anyone. Because of this, he feels he’s achieved a great accomplishment and has gone where no man has gone before. Almost 4 months in, Rachel and his best friends ask Tom to discuss with Summer just what exactly is going on with them to which she responds that she doesn’t know but says she’s happy and asks Tom if he’s happy who says he is. For another month and a half, things go well as Tom confesses he’s in love with Summer to his friends, his work performance improves, and they continue to go on dates to places like the movies and the museum.

At 8.5 months in is when Tom defends Summer from a jerk at a fancy bar and she is unappreciative saying she can handle herself. She’s about to call him a friend, before he stops her and tells her that friends don’t do those kinds of things which I definitely agree with. She tells him she likes him but she’s not looking for a relationship. At this point I would understand if Tom is very confused. I don’t think Summer has ever been certain about how she felt about Tom and may have only been in this “fling” because he liked her first. I still think she made the wrong move by kissing him at work which immediately raised his hopes. My question is, would she have brought it up or said anyhting on the matter if the situation had never arisen? How much longer would she have kept it up and when exactly did she begin to start having cold feet towards Tom? She KNOWS that he’s head over heels for her so why would she get upset when Tom defended her? It’s because she doesn’t see Tom as her man- he’s not obligated to do anything but if it were her boyfriend she would probably have felt differently. Later that night, after Tom storms off to his own place in anger after the way he was treated by Summer, she shows up at night, wet from the rain, and apologizes for earlier. Tom asks for consistency to know that she won’t wake up with changed feelings but she can’t promise that and tells him nobody can. Tom should have seen that this was another sign that maybe Summer was mucking around and not in it for the long-haul.

About a month later, Summer is becoming increasingly distant with Tom. She no longer finds amusement or joy in the things they do together and then only 8 days later, Rachel goes to his apartment to comfort him and where he tells her and his friends that he hates her knobby knees, her cockroach-shaped birthmark, her smile and everything else. 10 months in, he receives an email from Summer asking him if he’s ready to be friends. Another month and a half passes by, and Tom has been thinking only of Summer and feeling low even when he’s going out on dates with other girls- he’s obsessed. He needs to move on to a new location or something that he can focus on so that he can forget her. When he spills his feelings onto the girl he’s currently on a date with, the girl asks if Summer ever cheated on him or took advantage to which Tom responds no and the girl reminds him that Summer stated several times that she never wanted a boyfriend. 13 months in, on the way to a friend’s wedding, he sees Summer on the same train he’s on. They talk and catch up and hang out at the wedding. Summer invites Tom to a party she’s hosting that weekend and this is where Tom falls into another giant trap. Because they were happily hanging out at the wedding, Tom thought that things could turn around and that maybe Summer was rekindling feelings for him and that he had a slight chance yet. Poor, poor Tom. He went to that party with full-blown expectations and hoping to win the girl back. His world was crushed when he saw the engagement ring on her finger. With that, he knew it was over and left the party without a word to Summer.

Tom stays depressed, bitter, and nihilistic for a whole month and quits his job making greeting cards after making a big scene of how fake and misleading they are and that they make people believe a very fake idea of love. 15 months from the first day, Rachel (sister) tells Tom to think back on his times with Summer but to focus on all the moments, not just the good ones. Sometime between Day 282 and 290 (9.5 months in), I think that Summer watched The Graduate with Tom and came to the realization that she wasn’t happy with Tom and thereafter was crying and sullen because she caught the meaning of the film- that the couple in the film suddenly lost that feeling of euphoria when they boarded the bus once they realized they had no idea what they were doing. With this revelation, it prompts Summer to do what she knows she should have probably done at the 8.5 month mark. The same day, they go to eat pancakes where Summer breaks out the words that Tom never saw coming- they should stop seeing each other, and yet she comes up with an untrue reason of why they should stop, that all they do is argue when it’s really just because she’s not feeling it. She was too much of a coward to admit the truth. Tom doesn’t take this well and walks out of the diner right as Summer calls to him and says that he’s still her best friend…yikes. About half a month later from here is when he receives Summer’s email about being friends. At the diner she compared them to Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen where she compared herself to Sid most likely through the fact that they both took pity on their partners and were with them for sympathy’s sake but both relationships were destructive for them and she probably felt like she was stabbing Tom in the heart by staying with him any longer. For her it had to end.

For about the next 3 weeks, Days 456-476, Tom begins to get himself back together and starts focusing on what he really wants- to be an architect, meanwhile Summer gets married. Almost 2 weeks later, Summer and Tom are at his favouirte spot in the city as Summer knew she’d find him there. While talking about what they went through, Tom tells her that he’ll never understand how she never wanted to be anybody’s girlfriend and now she’s somebody’s wife. She admits that she was certain about this new man of what she was never sure of with Tom. Tom and Summer say goodbye as they go their separate ways. Tom then heads to an interview for an architect position and meets a new girl so fittingly and appropriately named Autumn as she accepts an invitation to join him for a drink. The count drops back to 0 as it signifies that Tom is starting anew……but will it be a fresh and successful endeavor for Tom or is he doomed to repeat the cycle again with notions of predetermined fate? By this point, exactly 500 days have passed since Tom first laid eyes on Summer.

Now it’s time to dissect and see if Summer really is at fault for making Tom believe he had a chance. In my humble and genuine opinion, I think she is, however, not directly. Most people today, from their interpretations that I’ve read, blame Tom because he was projecting the entire time. Sure, yes he was projecting but who doesn’t do that when they’re infatuated with someone or when they get a girlfriend/boyfriend for the first time? We believe nothing can go wrong because they’re our first- we fall into a pool of new feelings that we’ve never experienced before and because they are the first, we want them to be the only person we ever need or think they’ll be the only person we’ll ever need until that reality comes crashing down for some. Granted, Tom may have moved a little TOO fast- he was sure he liked her from the moment he saw her. This is dangerous because he didn’t know her but he did talk to her later and did get to know her but one kiss from Summer was enough to tell him he did it. He went straight into the “couple” stage without really spending much time with her and was blinded to her flaws, her humanity- to him she was a perfect goddess. He literally was in La La Land. There’s no way Tom could not have perceived any flaws unless he completely shut them out and chose to ignore them. In this case, he was lovesick and foolish. SUMMER ON THE OTHER HAND should never have entertained his feelings. She clearly said she didn’t want a boyfriend or relationship and yet she sleeps with Tom, kisses Tom, fools around with Tom etc. Make up your damn mind woman, you tortured the man by not being decisive or certain about your feelings. Tom should have seen the signs and Summer’s emotional immaturity, from an outside point of view, seemed manipulative. Initially, I always blamed Summer for how she treated Tom and thought it was deliberate but now I see that it wasn’t her fault……only. It was both of them. Both were immature and unfortunately it was our man Tom, the lovable JGL, who paid the price because he was the one set on obtaining the girl but alas, the girl was not the right one for him. Hopefully, both of them grew from this experience and learned what NOT TO DO for next time they somehow get into a mess of a “relationship”. Well I guess that cat’s out of the bag for Summer since she got married but Tom, here’s to you, man to man, you’ll find your woman yet.