The best pop songs ever made are nearly almost always written and performed by men. They re-tell stories of lost love and a woman who for no overly justifiable reason (at least not in your mind) decides one day she no longer wants you, can live quite fine without ever seeing you again and maybe most hurtfully of all, never really loved you anyway. Bob Dylan wrote songs about these women many, many times. 

They are the songs that Rob Gordon latched onto in High Fidelity but by all accounts it’s a theme that’s been shamefully underutilized in the cinematic medium. Rom-coms are decades behind their audio rival playing catch up on the true nature of love, resulting in probably the most depressing cinematic genre outside of the horror movie right now, as it’s all about giving the same repetitious candy to the consumer without any attempt at deep emotional resonance. Women want rom-com’s to involve pregnancy and weddings, whilst men want tales solely about guy issues (sex, feeling undervalued and undermined by women, just generally behaving badly) but every now and again, a gem will break the mould and tell a story that tells it like it is.

500 Days of Summer is that movie.

There’s a moment towards the end of the movie that is gut-wrenchingly painful to sit through, a line of true dialogue said from Summer (the quirky Zooey Deschanel) where our lead Tom (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) has to literally look away from the girl and us the viewer for around 10 seconds, a hush silence comes across the theatre, everyone felt that jab to the heart. It’s just a thunderbolt for anyone who’s ever experienced it. 

Martyn wrote a great review of the movie and we very much feel the same way about it, so I wouldn’t want to repeat myself but for any idealist who totally fell for the wrong woman and got their ass handed to them by the whole relationship… this movie is most definitely for you.