500 Days of Summer
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The Story
It’s not easy to tell a romantic comedy from a new perspective. Director Marc Webb and his team use a non-linear timeline and lots of indie quirk to pull it off in this examination of 500 days in a relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a writer of greeting cards and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), an assistant hired at his company.
We jump back and forth between their significant moments on Day 1, Day 325, Day 267, Day 489, Day 10, etc. It’s like one of those games where you remove the squares covering a picture, one at a time, to slowly reveal the whole image underneath.
Tom is a real romantic, looking for “the one.” Summer is a realist who says that kind of love is a fantasy. She’s not looking for anything serious, but she’s happy to go furniture shopping and have sex with him. In spite of her warnings, he falls deeply, emotionally in love with her.
Content Issues
Tom and Summer start having sex immediately after agreeing not to get serious. They watch and try to imitate a porn video, but nothing explicit is shown. Tom and Summer and their friends drink a lot of alcohol. God’s and Jesus’ names are used for swearing, along with quite a bit of other harsh language.
Worldview Talking Points
This film has done well by indie standards are received overwhelmingly positive reviews from secular critics. Its good buzz, likable stars, and “sophisticated” 20-something subject matter is likely to draw the interest of older teens.
And that subject matter is worth talking about if with them if you get the chance. The story is driven by all the old questions: Does destiny lead you to your true love? Is there someone out there for everyone? Can you miss him/her? Can you find him/her? What if you find her and she just wants to be friends?
Over the years, we’ve made a point on PlanetWisdom to try to encourage students to reject the culture’s greeting card view of love as an external a force that happens to you when destiny fates it to be so. The Scripture doesn’t say a lot about how two people wind up married, but once there it’s clear that love is a choice based on an active commitment to another person—not a feeling that comes and goes over time.
We hope a few of the following questions will help you to have a productive conversation with your child about love, sex, marriage, and “500 Days of Summer.”
- Did you like how the story was told out of order? Did you enjoy the other quirky elements, like the unexpected dance number, the animation, the soundtrack?
- Do you imagine that the story comes pretty close to the relationships that a lot of 20-somethings experience while looking for the right person? How so?
- Tom believed in true romantic love. Summer initially thought that was just fantasy. Which comes closer to your view of love and marriage? Why?
- How would you describe the Bible’s definition of love between a man and woman? [Parent: Look for an opportunity to emphasize that in the Bible, love is given as a command to do something, not as a feeling that comes and goes over time.]
- How do you think the story would have played out differently if Tom had been a Christian trying to live by biblical principles in this relationship? How about if both Tom and Summer had been trying to follow the Bible’s teaching about marriage, sex, and relationships?
- Tom ends up suffering a lot of pain as a result of his relationship with Summer. Do you think he would have suffered less if he had waited for sex until a marriage commitment was in place? Why or why not?
- How do you think we benefit if we follow the Bible’s teaching about saving sex until after the commitment of marriage? What do you think we lose out on by obeying that teaching?
- At one point in the movie, Summer tells Tom that nobody could promise him not to one day wake up and not want to be with him any more. Do you think that’s true? Do you think love is a feeling or a commitment, something that just comes along or something you choose to give away? Why?
- Tom and Summer do several things the Bible warns against—things that can make relationships particularly brutal. Which ones did you notice? [Parent: The couple spends a lot of time getting drunk. They have sex before getting married. And they fail to guard their hearts before making a commitment. See Ephesians 5:18, Hebrews 13:4, and Proverbs 4:23, and emphasize that these instructions are given to protect us from the kind of pain Tom experiences.]
- Do you think it’s realistic for a couple to follow God’s teaching on sexual purity and marriage commitment these days? Why or why not?
- Do you think you can control who you love? How can you guard your heart against giving yourself over to someone you’re deeply attracted to but with whom it would be unwise for you to be in a relationship?
- “500 Days of Summer” is a fun, well-made move in several ways. Is it too hard to think about these worldview issues and enjoy a movie at the same time? Do you think it’s important to watch movies with a critical eye to notice what messages they’re bringing up or assuming to be true?
- How can living according to the Bible’s perspective on love, sex, and marriage make people more confident and less likely to get hurt? What do you have to sacrifice to live for God in this area of your life? What will you gain?
sikis izle on Dec 26, 2009 said...
It’s made with a glimmer of humour smile