Collage by Layan Dajani (@in_an_alternate_universe_).

500 Days of Summer is a movie where the bad guy—or in this case, girl—wins the happy ending, while the good guy gets the short end of the stick. At least that’s what I thought when I first watched it. You see, I was in a mentally bad place at the time; heartbroken, devastated, and frustrated, so this movie just hit too close to home. Both Tom and I were hopeless romantics—we were naïvely optimistic and had unrealistic expectations for our loved ones. We both put them on a high pedestal and looked at them through rose-colored glasses—we saw them as ones who could do no wrong. We cherished them, loved them deeply, saw the whole world through their eyes and expected them to do the same, because, well, it’s only fair that they would.

And life turned out to be surprisingly (unsurprisingly, actually) unfair. We were betrayed; none of our actions were reciprocated and our loved one’s thank-yous came in the form of heartbreak. Summer, Tom’s ex-lover—who left him because she “didn’t want to be anybody’s girlfriend”—ended up marrying a guy she only got to know for a short period of time. Her explanation, which was totally unreasonable for both Tom and I, was, “I just woke up one day and I knew”. When Tom asked her to explain what exactly she meant by “knew”, her answer was, “What I was never sure of with you”, and that sentence alone is enough to justify what happened. You see, the idea of love in Tom and I’s minds only existed in fairytales, and this movie shows that really well through Tom and Summer’s relationship. Summer made it clear from the beginning and had explicitly told Tom that she, “[is] not looking for anything serious,” however, Tom and I made the mistake of ignoring these signs for the sake of fulfilling our fantasy of love. But interestingly enough, it was Tom’s childish, naïve, and optimistic view of love was what made Summer change her cynical view of it, which had resulted in her marrying the man she had met at a restaurant. Thinking it was too much of a coincidence and that it had been her fate, she had found him reading the same book as she was.

What had essentially happened was that we selfishly fell in love with the idea of people rather than seeing them for who they really are—not the fabricated version we have of them. Because when we unknowingly burden them with these high expectations, it is actually unfair to both us, yet we still take their reactions personally. And when Tom finally let go, he found his own happiness. What I liked about the ending is that Tom could have just given up on love or shut himself out. He could have pushed people away and built walls around himself like I did; but no, he actually had the courage to continue with his optimistic view of love and decided to give people a chance again. This is seen in the final scene, where he was talking to a girl that told him that he looked familiar, which they later discover that they both had frequented the same place—one that Tom had previously taken Summer to. He tells her that it’s his favorite spot in the city but says that he had never seen her there before, to which she replies with, “you must not have been looking”. When his name is called out and he begins to leave, the viewer begins to think that he’s learned his lesson about “fate” and not looking into things more than he should, but he then turns back and asks the girl out for her name and whether or not she wants to have some coffee with him later. She agrees and tells him that her name is Autumn.

500 Days of Summer is a realistic movie with a realistic ending. It’s not about a love story—it’s a story about love. ◆

Contact Njoud through njoudes2@gmail.com