Lecture 7 - Development of Ideas & structure in Moving Image

An example of a film that uses the typical film structure of a beginning, middle and an end and also fits to Joseph Campell’s theory of the hero with a thousand faces (1949) is 500 days of summer. The story follows the protagonist Tom played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his pursuit to get the girl of his dreams, summer. The film uses a fragmented storyline and shows the “love story” on different stages of the relationship over the time of 500 days. Although we are told that “this is a story of boy meets girl but this is not a love story”. The story cleverly let3s the audience know which stage of the relationship they are at by showing them the amount of days into the 500. We also know the mood and how the relationship is going by the use of colour and the weather in the illustration showing the amount of days.
The hero in the story is Tom as we are lead to feel sorry for him as he falls knowingly and hopelessly in love with the "evil" Summer who he believes leads him on. As the story has a fragmented story line we know during the film that there are going to be ups and downs in the relationship at that Summer still has not really done anything wrong. Yet as an audience we still cannot help being on Tom's side as we feel just like he does, that Summer has led him on. As he then tries to forget about her he meets her on a train to a wedding and as he spends time together with her again he remembers the times he shared with her before. As the story progresses we find out that summer is engaged to be married despite not wanting to form a relationship with summer, the two meet again and talk but there is a mellow tone to their discussion despite the two characters being friendly towards each other. The story ends and the two separate despite the two remaining civil we still cannot help taking toms side as he is the one who fell in love with her and is left alone.
As an audience we find Tom’s character more relatable as we see him in emotional states we have all been through ourselves and we really want him to form the relationship with Summer. We want to see him happy, despite us as audience knowing what may happen before he does. We also can perhaps relate his character as he lets us more into his life than summer does as we see his home, his friends, his workplace which is where he meets Summer and his family.