Story Questions:
Where is the story set?
Los Angeles
What event starts the story?
Summer Finn is hired at a company that makes greeting cards where Tom Hansen also works. He sees her for the first time when their boss introduces her to the team, becomes convinced that they are destined to be together and that he has found “the one”.
Who are the main characters?
Summer Finn and Tom Hansen
What conflicts do they face/ what is at stake?
The first conflict is that Summer Finn does not believe in love, and isn’t looking for a relationship when they initially get together. Tom is looking for a relationship with Summer, but they casually date for a while. When Summer breaks up with Tom he is devastated, and the second conflict is that he wants to be with her and she just wants to be friends. As he is trying to win her back he finds out that she is getting married to another man. For so long she refused to be his girlfriend, when all of a sudden she agrees to be someone’s wife.
What happens to the characters as they face this conflict?
Summer realizes that she does not want to be with Tom, and she breaks up with him, seemingly abruptly. She moves on and meets someone else, and Tom becomes upset and eventually depressed without Summer. His performance at work is depleted, and his boss changes his job to writing cards about misery rather than love, which he is good at. He then attempts to win her back, but finds out she is engaged to another man, and his depression and lack of motivation worsens. He quits his job and stops doing anything productive.
What is the outcome of this conflict?
Summer gets married and is happy with her new husband. After Tom has spent many days in depression because of Summer and quits his job, he gets sudden motivation to follow his dream of becoming an architect – something Summer had always pushed him to pursue, since he studied it in college. He builds a portfolio and begins going to job interviews, slowly getting over Summer in the process.
What is the ultimate impact on the characters?
The ultimate impact for Summer is that she ends up happy with her new husband. After Tom sees Summer in the park and realizes that she has moved on and that she didn’t intentionally try to hurt him, he moves on too. She tells him that he was right about love all along, but that he wasn’t right about her. They learned from one another; Summer learned that love does exist, and Tom learned that some things are just coincidences and that both people in a relationship have to make each other happy. While waiting for one of his interviews, Tom meets a new girl and feeling spontaneous, asks her out. She says yes, and that her name is “Autumn” – the next phase of Tom’s life, coming just after “Summer”.
Plot questions:
How and when is the major conflict in the story set up?
Scenes depicting the conflict are intermingled throughout the film, depending on what day it is out of the 500 days in which the story takes place. The first scene where the conflict of Summer and Tom breaking up is shown is when the two of them are sitting in a diner eating Pancakes. Summer very matter-of-factly says that she thinks they should stop seeing each other, and Tom doesn’t know why. She compares them to “Sidd and Nancy”, where she is Sidd and he is Nancy. (Sidd stabbed Nancy).
How and when are the main characters introduced?
The opening scene shows Summer and Tom towards the end of the story, sitting on a park bench. Just after this, a narrator begins to describe Summer and Tom’s opposite opinions of love, showing Tom growing up with the goal of finding the right one, and Summer growing up believing that love didn’t exist – her attachment only to the inconsistency and independence of her own life.
How is the story moved along so that the characters must face the central
conflict?
The story is moved along through the director showing what day it is out of the 500 days. Slowly, as you watch the days change, you realize that the later days show Tom sad and depressed, usually without Summer, with a much darker tone. The earlier days usually show how they meet, their first kiss, and the two happy together. The viewer needs to pay close attention to the sequence, but the story progresses showing longer, more detailed clips of the beginning of the story in early scenes, and longer and detailed clips of end of the story in later scenes, although they are all intermingled throughout.
How and when is the major conflict set up to propel the film to its
conclusion?
The major conflict is shown in a short scene (at the diner eating pancakes) early on the in film, and it almost immediately snaps back to a scene where they are happy together, far before they break up. The lead in to this scene is depicted later in the movie in short bursts. Then, during the second conflict, when Tom thinks he can win Summer back, the film shows Tom going to a party that Summer invited him to. The scene shows Tom’s expectations going to see Summer, and the actual reality of what happens. This scene is shown in two views right next to one another in a split-screen. The two views of his expectations and the reality of what is happening are the same at the beginning, and opposite at the end. He realizes that she is engaged. After this event, Tom goes into a deeper depression before moving on with his life, and ultimately making it better.
How and when does the film resolve most of the major conflicts set up at
the outset?
When Tom begins to leave his depression, he gets a bit of motivation, and draws a large scale city landscape on his wall. He begins to sketch again and put his portfolio together. When he runs into Summer in the park and realizes that she has moved on and is happy with someone else, he gets the closure he needed, says what he wanted to say, and then begings to fully move on. This gives rise to his motivation to continue with his interviews. He then meets a new girl who he would previously not have talked to or asked out when he was obsessing over Summer, but he takes a chance, and is finally over her.
