MentalPolyphonics
Where have all the plumbers gone?
One thing that was sad was people emphasizing...August 13, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Tagged: existentialism, Movies, Reviews
There’s nothing glaringly wrong with this film, but half way through I realized that I’d rather be watching a different film. Rather than talk about the real 500 Days of Summer, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about my film. It starts the same way:
Tom believes in soul mates. Tom meets Summer and they start to date casually. Tom falls in love with Summer. Summer dumps Tom. Tom reflects on their time together.
My point of departure is catharsis:
Tom realizes that he didn’t actually know Summer, that she had no character. Rather, Tom is in love with a mental construct of his ideal mate. When Summer dumped Tom it shattered this construct, revealing her to be the Other. In addition to losing this particular construct, Tom recognizes the futility of new constructs.
Tom realizes that he is ultimately alone in the world. Tom will never truly know someone else and will never have the soul mate relationship he fantasizes about. Tom comes to accept the loneliness of the world and share the viewpoints of his two friends: McKenzie, who avoids suffering by lack of desire of the Other, and Paul, who recognizes that the Other is generic and continues to date the first girl who came along.
I’d probably have to give Camus a writing credit.
Jack
That’s really good. The trick is that Hollywood sells illusions, not reality.
Maybe you’re just ahead of the curve. Maybe in 30 years kids will be struggling with an entirely different set of foregone conclusions and imaginary problems and your reality will be a pleasantly quaint illusion to them.
One can hope, but probably shouldn’t.
Don
The only test of how well we know someone is how well our model of them predicts their behaviour. The best way to predict their behaviour is not what they say, however earnestly, but by their past behaviour. That there is an internal “you” that is a “truer self” than what your body does and says is largely an illusion.
I’m not saying that your consciousness is an illusion, but that the idea that you really “know” yourself so much better than anyone else could, is. What you tell yourself, in the massively parallel, disjointed, non-contemporaneous brain of yours, is not necessarily a higher or truer insight into yourself than how others know you.
Jack
Okay, I will. And thank God: I don’t know if I could handle this trip if it wasn’t.
[Edited to add: "but that the idea that you really “know” yourself so much better than anyone else could, is." <- qft to that as well -- that's why poker works. If you knew yourself as well as other people then you'd never give off tells.]
The Breakup Movie | MentalPolyphonics
on October 28, 2009 at 2:08 am
[...] Jack on Wednesday, 2009-October-28th at 2:07 am I’m writing something loosely based on Jared’s review of (500) Days of Summer. I’m thinking that the way into the character is to have him not be [...]