People expect things. I’m sorry, that must be the most general statement I’ve ever made. But it’s true. We make for ourselves elaborate stories of what we want and despair when we’re faced with reality. And, as most people know, reality’s pretty harsh. So we hide behind another rosy picture of the future. Again and again. (500) Days of Summer shows us this pathetic cycle so vividly that we can’t help but cringe and laugh as we see ourselves in the characters.

Tom is your regular, everyday guy stuck with a job writing greeting cards (which, I think, is the most inane job I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering) who meets Summer, a beautiful woman with his taste in music and a thrillingly fresh outlook on love and life. As all romance comedies go, Tom naturally falls for Summer, and the two begin a casual romance. Casual for Summer, constantly on the edge for Tom.

You see, Tom wants a relationship where he can be sure of Summer’s affection for him. He wants serious commitment, or at least the guarantee that Summer won’t turn away the next day. Summer, unbound by social conventions, disagrees. Still, the two get along fine. They both like the Smiths, after all.

Unfortunately, Tom and Summer slowly fall apart. I can't tell you everything, but the rest of Tom's 500 days is about trying to fix his relationship and his life. He is on a roller coaster of emotions: despair, false hope, more despair, then healing through his channeling of feelings into what he truly loves, and the most unexpected closure.

I love this movie because everything. Yes, (500) Days makes me grammatically dysfunctional. Every single part of the film works superbly together. I could go on for days about how Joseph Gordon-Levitt perfectly captures your everyday guy who wants and expects love and how Zooey Deschanel plays a girl who’s charming and mercilessly pretty yet independent as well. I could ramble for days about the beautiful lighting, or the dry wit practically bursting out of every line. I could even gush on and on about Summer’s costumes (WHERE. DID. YOU. GET. THAT. SKIRT) Hell, I just did.

But while these parts are important, I think the biggest wonder of this movie is how it takes a seemingly common, shallow, everyday story and uses it to convey something so profound. Tom’s biggest mistake is thinking of Summer as a potential girlfriend, not a person. We use social context and our own, projected feelings to define what a person is instead of letting the person identify herself herself. We place our expectations on people and expect them to follow, then feel hurt when they don’t. Who are we to define others? We get ourselves mixed up often enough; why can’t we learn that our expectations of others may be even more shortsighted?

On that train of thought, I think (500) Days also laughs at us for our incredibly passive lives. Tom hates his job (though he’s surprisingly good at what he does). When he complains to Summer, Summer tells him “Well, you should do something else, then.” It’s that simple, but he can’t. Why do we hold onto things that aren’t important? Social conventions, risk of failure, yes, these are a few problems, but have we ever really tried? Have we ever really thought about what kind of life we’re living, and why we’re stuck going to a boring office with equally inane coworkers? Because of the pretty girl in the corner? Or is it that we’ve never really thought for ourselves, running the wheel like hamsters, working because it’s been given? Snap out of it, says (500) Days. Think, for once.