Response Paper

Carrie Stula
2/8/10
English 312
Response Paper: Two-page analysis of a non-Woody Allen comedic film using for your critical lens *only* the texts discussed thus far in class, e.g., Freud, Kaufman, Perelman, Roth, Ravits, and/or Gilman.

The film I have chosen for this response paper is (500) days of Summer. The film was made in 2009 it was written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber and was directed by Marc Webb. It was praised at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win the grand jury selection prize. This film has been called the Annie Hall of our generation which is why I chose to write about this film. I absolutely loved (500) days of Summer and am not a fan of Annie Hall. The story is offbeat and comical with how the lead character Tom Hansen handles his break up with Summer Finn. Tom becomes obsessive and begins to lose touch with reality after the break-up with Summer.
In the film the Tom Hansen is an average looking greeting card writer. He went to school for architecture but only does doodles of the Los Angeles landscape. The girl whom Tom falls in love with is a bohemian artistic girl named Summer Finn. She has always been severely independent and does not believe in the concept of true love or marriage; this doesn’t stop Tom’s pursuit he fell in love with Summer the moment he met her. The film is not in chronological order, the time period shifts from different days of their relationship (500 days). The film starts with when Summer begins working at the greeting card company and jumps around from there. We see them dating, their first sexual encounter, their break-up, their make-up and then their permanent break up.
Tom is a less neurotic version of many of Woody Allen’s Character’s (in his films). They do share the obsession/fear of death. They are also similar in how blind they are of the demise of their relationships and seeing where it went wrong, as if there were no signs. The difference between Allen’s lead Characters and Tom Hansen is that Tom believes in love at first sight, fate, and destiny whereas Allen’s characters don’t believe in love in the same context. The characters that Allen creates are dependent on the woman as a comfort level, to fulfill an intellectual need or a sexual desire. Tom and Allen both build up the idea of Summer (or Annie) because they believe that they can’t do any better than them and they miss what these woman really are; no good for them.
In Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious it discusses the concept of dream-work. That a tissue of thoughts, usually a very complicated one, which has built up during the day has not been completely dealt with-‘a day’s residue’-continues during the night to retain the quota of energy-the ‘interest’-claimed by it, and threatens to disturb sleep. (Freud 199) How (500) days of Summer uses this idea is throughout the films numerous dream sequences. There is a black and white French parody film of Tom’s and Summer’s romance; the day after Tom and Summer first have sex (there is a musical number and animated birds) and also there is an exceptionally unique use of split screen to show reality/fantasy when Tom agrees to go to a party at Summer’s apartment. In his mind he is hoping that they will rekindle their flame but in reality she has moved on and is now engaged.
These dream sequences reinforce the idea that because Tom has not truly dealt with his feelings his mind is running away in fantasy. The book continues to state that the dream-work takes the step from the optative to the present indicative; it replaces ‘Oh! If only…’by ‘It is’ is then given a hallucinatory representation. (Freud 201) Tom has been playing out his relationship with Summer in his mind, it was a wonderful relationship in his mind. If he really goes back and looks into their relationship he will see that the signs were there, she didn’t love him and really wasn’t his soul mate.