(500) Days of Summer: Seasons of Love

I didn't see this movie for free, but I still had an amazing experience seeing it. Like Public Enemies, I saw (500) Days of Summer introduced by its director (and in this case, star Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in attendance as well), and a hilarious short film was played beforehand. In one sense, (500) Days of Summer can be described as a romantic comedy, in that it is a funny movie about the romantic relationship between a man and a woman, but this is a "romantic comedy" the way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a "romantic comedy". Unlike big studio romantic comedies, the drama in this film feels real and there certainly isn't a Hollywood ending. The opening narration states that the film is not a love story, but I disagree with that. This is a love story, but it is a story of unrequited love.

The movie is told over the period of 500 days, and is often shown out of order. A marker denoting what day it is pops up occassionally to tell us when the following scenes take place in the chronology of Tom and Summer's relationship (the number is always bracketed by parentheses, like so: (488), hence the movies title). Tom grew up believing in true love, soul mates, and that kind of stuff. He works for a greeting card company, where he puts these feelings to good use by writing sentimental cards (this career path was not selected for that reason though; he studied architecture, but took an easier path instead of applying himself). Summer grew up jaded about the notion of "true love" because of various experiences in her childhood, notably her parents' divorce. She is very beautiful and sweet, and is wary of the men who fall for her, because she is afraid that they are only attracted to her physical beauty and outward personality, rather than who she is on deeper levels. Her sweetness defines her social self, but that quality doesn't always define her personal self. She meets Tom when she gets a job as the assistant to Tom's boss, and after a rocky first couple of meetings, they begin dating.

However, the audience (but not Tom) soon realizes that Tom and Summer are looking for different things in their relationship. Tom thinks that he has finally met "the One", while Summer just wants to have fun and be friends (albeit friends who have sex with each other). Summer cares for Tom as a friend (possibly a little more than a friend based on something the narrator said), but she never feels the deeper feelings for Tom that Tom feels about her. This causes Tom to go from euphoria to near-suicidal depression, which is juxtaposed by showing Day (150) and Day (400) next to each other. And yet, even after feeling such depression, Tom is willing to set himself up for these feelings again when he believes that she is finally ready to commit to him the way he has to her. The narrator points out that Tom has expected and experienced far different things throughout his life, and that he still hasn't learned that expectations only lead to being let down.

The (500) days come to an end when Tom is able to accept that about his life (and when something happens to give the title of my post greater meaning). The unrequited love helps allow for self-discovery and helps Tom realize that a good life isn't contingent on finding true love. The journey is at times hilarious (the dance sequence was probably my favorite scene in the movie), heartbreaking, and moving. (500) Days of Summer is further proof that movies about rocky romantic relationships don't have to be awful cliche-fests.

Up next: Far, far away...

Slumdog Millionaire: It Was Written

The Oscars are on this Sunday, and although I've only seen two of the five Best Picture nominees (and don't have a whole lot of respect for the Academy), I really want to talk about the movie I feel should win (even though I haven't seen three of the nominees). When Slumdog Millionaire first started getting a lot of good press, I was intrigued as to how a movie about Who Wants To Be A Millioniare could possibly be so good. But more and more people praised it and I learned that it was more about growing up as a poor child in India. Still, I was unsure of what I was getting myself into when I saw it. I'm so happy I took the chance...

Slumdog is definitely a fairy tale in the sense that the gameshow element is very fantastical. But the gameshow was barely more than a frame for the tale of a young "slumdog" in Mumbai, India. Jamal Malik was born into poverty, and he was a Muslim in a nation of Hindus that hated him and his religion. So when he got to the $1 million question (or 20 million rupee question) on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the host came to the only logical conclusion: he cheated. After all, how could a boy from the slums who had almost no schooling possibly get that far? Doctors, lawyers, and scholars barely made it 3/4ths of the way through the questions, so Jamal had to cheat... right?

He and his brother Salim had to figure out how to live on their own after a Hindu mob killed their mother. The two of them lived on the street, scammed tourists at the Taj Mahal, and worked for a group of people similar to Fagan from Olvier Twist; they picked pockets and begged for money, then turned it over to their "caregivers". And as Jamal grew up, various noteworthy moments in his life supplied him with the information that gave him the answers for the show. When he was running from the mob that killed his mother, he saw a boy dressed as a Hindu god, and the image stuck with him. When a question asked him what item that god was traditionally depicted carrying, Jamal knew the answer.

Jamal and Salim meet a young girl named Latika, and Jamal falls in love with her. As happens in many fairy tales, Jamal and Latika are kept apart by various twists of fate, and Jamal makes it his mission to always be reunited with her, even if he has to overcome insurmountable odds. When he learns that she likes to watch Millionaire, he goes on the show, hoping beyond all hope that she would be watching.

Latika explains that for many people in India, Millionaire is an escapist fantasy; the idea that someone can turn their life around in one night is too good an opportunity to pass up, and viewers want to live the contestants' dreams vicariously. The same holds true for the viewers of the movie; we like love stories because we want to feel like something like that could happen to us. We want to overcome impossible odds to be with the person we believe we are meant to be with.

Slumdog also has a kind of twisted beauty to it in the scenes of poverty. Watching Jamal, Salim, and Latika put up with the various trials of living in such deplorable conditions is mostly horrifying, but we keep believing that there will be something better out there. Also, they are poor in some very beautiful places. The Taj Mahal is a lone landmark of wealth, and even the slums had a kind of beauty of decay thing going.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, do so as soon as possible. I don't think I've yet met a person who has disliked it (and one person I know who loved it went into it believing she would hate it).

Up next: Sexual healing...

Juno: A Brief Note

Sorry I've been gone for a while, I was out of town. Anyway, I'll get back to Arrested Development and Veronica Mars right after this brief mention of Juno. While on my trip, I saw Juno again, and it remains awesome. However, I noticed something strange. The first time I saw the movie, I was expecting Jason Bateman's character Mark to make a move on Juno, especially during the scene in the basement. The second time I saw it, I was not expecting him to make a move on her, because he doesn't (explicitly), but this time around, Mark came off as much creepier in that scene. I maintain my position that Mark did what he thought was best, but in that one basement scene, it almost seemed as if he were trying to put the moves on Juno. I found it very strange how expecting Mark to be creepy made him not so while the lack of expectation is what made him seem more creepy.

Anyway, back to Veronica...

Juno: The Title Character And Her Cheese

Ok, so first of all, doesn't it look like Ellen Page and Michael Cera are 13 in this picture?! They are, as of January 2008, 20 and 19 respectively. But damn, look at them there.

Anyway, in this last post for Juno (for now, anyway), I will address the portrayal of Juno and Paulie. As the title character, we see most of the movie through Juno's eyes. She narrates, gives commentary (the part about the true desires of jock kids was pretty funny), and provides a lens through which to view the other characters. However, she herself admits that she is too immature to deal with life just yet, so we must assume that this lens is cracked and faulty. Just because Juno may feel something doesn't mean that it is right or rational, especially when her pregnancy hormones kick in.

I've said this before, but I must warn you again, there will be spoilers in this post. The intro posts tend to be the most spoiler-free and geared toward people who haven't seen the topic of the post yet. Once I get more into things, my writings become a little more about analysis of the deeper meanings meant to help guide people who have seen the film/show/book before.

Juno's relationship with Paulie starts out prior to the film as that of a best friend. They were in a struggling band together, and while Paulie's mom may have disapproved of the off-kilter Juno, we are led to believe that they were inseparable. Of course, conception tends to change the relationship between people who are "just friends", and the two sort of grow apart through the course of the movie.

It doesn't help that Paulie is throwing himself at Juno in a very passive way, while all Juno can focus on is her pregnancy. She cannot be blamed for this, as teenage pregnancy is no light matter. But when she suggests that Paulie date some random girl, then berates him when he does, Juno proves that for as much wit and wisdom as she seems to have, she still has a long way to go to achieve maturity. I'm kind of surprised that Paulie did not say one word about hormones ("Fuck you hormones!" -Knocked Up), because she definitely exhibited some wild mood swings.

Paulie, on the other hand, needed to learn to go after what he wanted (though this may not be a sign of immaturity, but of timidity), and to learn how to pick up obvious signals. Juno's suggestion to date the other girl may have only been a sign of fear, not an actual suggestion. However, while Juno does get mad at Paulie, I do not think the audience is ever meant to dislike him the way we are kind of led to dislike Mark and/or Vanessa.

So there is Juno. There is still a lot to talk about; I didn't even mention Juno's other friend, Leah, but my discussion of the lack of good guy/bad guy dynamics is at an end. While I am moving on for now, rest assured that if I ever feel the need to talk about a topic again, I will not hesitate to return.

Up next: Comparing and contrasting Arrested Development and Veronica Mars...

Juno: Beyond Black and White

I will start my discussion of the ambiguity of the good guy/bad guy roles in Juno by looking at the relationships Juno forms with Mark and Vanessa, the couple looking to adopt her child. As I said in my last post, Vanessa is initially shown as a control freak who acts as more of a landlady or mother to Mark than a wife. Juno herself addresses that idea when she chides Mark's comment about how Vanessa "gave him a room for all of his stuff". His stuff includes his guitar, record albums, and recording equipment, which should be seen as a little strange, since we learn that Mark is a composer of advertisement jingles. Mark later states that Vanessa doesn't like it when Vanessa hates it when he watches movies or listens to music all day and doesn't "contribute" (so why does she force him to do his work in one cramped little room?).

Mark on the other hand would probably have been Juno's best friend if they went to high school together. He is exactly like Paulie, her best friend and father of her baby, in many aspects, such as interests, and possibly better in others; Mark is much more sure of himself than Paulie is, who is extremely timid. Right away, Mark and Juno hit it off, giving each other mix tapes and recommending bad horror films and punk rock bands. Strangely enough, the young Juno endorses music from the 70's, when punk was born, while Mark champions 90's punk rock bands like Sonic Youth.

For about the first half of the film, we are clearly meant to like Mark and dislike Vanessa. Mark is a cool guy who we kind of want to see break free from Vanessa's control. However, that starts to change when Juno (and us) see Vanessa at the mall with, most likely, her sister and niece. Suddenly we realize that Vanessa's obsession for a baby will be the exact quality that will make her a good mother to Juno's child. At the same time, Juno's scenes with Mark start to become a little creepy. What starts as cute banter slowly becomes strange to everyone but the two of them. Juno's parents worry that she is spending too much time with Mark, while Vanessa becomes upset whenever she sees Juno's minivan in the driveway. Sadly, everyone's fears are confirmed. Fortunately, neither one ever makes a move on the other (which was what I had predicted would happen, especially during their dance scene), but Juno causes Mark to realize that maybe he does want more out of life than to be chained to Vanessa and a new baby.

Wait. Wasn't that what we wanted Mark to realize when we first met him and Vanessa? When he tells Juno that he intends to leave Vanessa, she flips out, telling him that she has to stay with his wife for the sake of the baby. By the end of the film, Vanessa is the character the audience is sympathetic to, while Mark let Juno down.

Of course, I don't think it's that simple. Most of the people I saw the film with had this point of view, where they started out liking Mark and ended up disliking him, while they changed their opinion about Vanessa to end up liking her. For me, however, even though i initially disliked Vanessa, I ended up liking both characters. It is all about what Juno needs when. She needed someone to adopt her baby, since she clearly is too immature to raise it herself (she was mature enough to realize her immaturity), and Vanessa clearly fit the bill. But as I said, the very things that made Juno and the audience dislike her at first were what would make her a good mother. She was obsessively cleaning her home before Juno arrived, but it wasn't because she is crazy, it was because she wanted to appear immaculate so that Juno would finally grant her greatest wish, a child of her own.

On the other hand, Mark would have made a great friend to Juno. But she didn't need a friend, she needed a responsible father for her child. Mark, for all of his coolness, is probably too immature to raise a child, but that is why Juno wanted to spend time with him. But when Juno needed him most (and when her hormones were most likely at their most inconsistent), he showed her that she couldn't have him both ways. Still, I left the theater still liking Mark. We saw things through Juno's eyes, so we may see him as a flake, but maybe it was noble of him to admit his reluctance for a child BEFORE he had adopted it.

Moving on, I would like to discuss Juno's father, Mac, and step-mother, Bren. These characters didn't get quite the screen-time that Mark and Vanessa got, but there is still something to analyze. Though I never think we are meant to dislike either of them, they both display aspects of character that are very real and do not have normal good guy/bad guy cliches. Bren, for example, does show at least one line making her seem like the stereotypical "evil stepmother". Juno comments that Bren is obsessed with dogs, but we learn that the reason that there is no MacGuff family dog is that Juno is allergic. In a heated argument, Bren yells that once Juno moves out, she is going to get a dog (making Juno respond, "DREAM BIG!"). Many times in fiction, the step-parent wants to get rid of the child (see: Back to the Future Part II, The Parent Trap), but in this case, Bren was merely stating what she was going to do once Juno had left for college. And for all her scenes of anger of Juno's pregnancy (and what parent wouldn't be angry about their teenage daughter getting pregnant), she has her fair share of tender scenes with Juno. Sadly for Bren, Juno tends to focus more on the harshness, which is highlighted when she thanks Bren for backing her up at the doctor's office, stating that she is surprised to see Bren's good side for once.

As for Mac, he reacts the way a father should to his teenage daughter's pregnancy. He doesn't go ballistic and throw her out or beat up the father (but he threatens to). Instead, he shows his outrage, and then supports her decision to give up the baby for adoption. He even gives her a lift to Mark and Vanessa's and acts as the diplomat to counteract Juno's more abrasive style of talking.

Like I said, there isn't as much good/bad to examine with Juno's parents, but their humanity is worth looking at.

Up next: Juno and Paulie

Juno: The Intro

One of my friends described Juno as Knocked Up from the woman's perspective in an effort to get someone else to see the film with us. It was an amusing summary, but ultimately incorrect. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Knocked Up very much, but while it does have a heartwarming story, it lacks the depth of Juno.

Juno tells the story of 16-year-old Juno MacGuff, a snarky teenager who gets pregnant after a one-nighter with her best friend, Paulie. The movie takes place over the course of a year, chronicling Juno's search for a family to adopt her baby as well as her now awkward dealings with Paulie. Early on, she finds Mark and Vanessa, a couple who cannot have a child of their own, and are very willing to adopt Juno's baby. Things seem perfect, and it would seem that now all the movie has to do is focus on her school troubles. Obviously, the seemingly perfect couple isn't, but in a strange move, the school storyline takes a back seat to Juno's dealings with Mark and Vanessa. From their first scene, there is an air about Vanessa that is unsettling, while Mark is shown as a kindred spirit to Juno. They are both fans of punk rock, bad horror films, and wish that they could be rock stars. Vanessa is much more grounded in reality, seeing Mark's loves as boyish fantasies, which may be harsh, but are probably correct.

Juno and Paulie's story is sadly too short in the 90-minute film, but the scenes they do have together are great (plus, I always love seeing Arrested Development's Michael Cera). Ellen Page and Cera had a great chemistry, and played their roles in a way that was both smart and accurate. Juno especially speaks in a way that may be too smart for teenagers, but both actors portray the emotions their characters feel in ways that actual teenagers would: immaturely. At first, neither of them can really appreciate the gravity of the pregnancy, and when the hormones take over, neither one can appropriately address Juno's concerns (this will be more fully addressed in an upcoming post). Of course, everyone in the film does a great job in their roles (J.K. Simmons does not get nearly enough screen time), but I had to give special recognition to Page and Cera.

Juno sounds like a very by-the-numbers film, and in some ways, it is. The ending is in no way a surprise, and of course, the "twists" (if we can call them that) are to be expected. Juno's preferred adoptive parent changes by the end of the film, and Mark's decision can be seen coming a mile away. But while these things often detract from films, I think that these actually help Juno succeed. The wit of the film is worth seeing it alone, but watching the character interactions is what the film is about. Yes, Juno's preferred person changes, but it does so because Mark and Vanessa's behavior warrant the change. And Juno's relationship with Paul evolves in a way that makes what would be a trite ending into exactly what we want to see.

But my favorite aspect of the character interactions is the fact that the film bucks the idea of "good" guys and "bad" guys. Where most movies would shine a negative light on the people we are supposed to dislike, Juno the film does not force us to dislike the characters that Juno the character dislikes.

Up next: beyond black and white...