500 days of summer
A guy comes out of nowhere and suddenly has fallen head over heels in love for you. No, he does not know anything about you, not even your favorite color. But he is absolutely sure that it is you who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Don't get all suspicious. The guy is not conning you, which is very much possible in some cases; but lets park those guys as exceptions. But this guy is really swooning over you.
What the guy doesn't know? That he has issues - issues as a child which were not addressed, he has some issues with one or both of his parents, he had a series of failed relationships, he failed to secure dates with women, he has been long looking for a girl to marry and settle down but could not find one, and 'n' number of other issues. So he has a fantasy ongoing in his head, where exists a dream girl, This girl has all the qualities he assigns her - if he wants her to be a conservative house wife, that is who she is. If he wants to play the "knight in the shining armour", she is the damsel in distress. She is a figment of his imagination, an escape from the harsh realities of his miserable life.
One day he looks at a girl, he is convinced that she is the one in his fantasies. He believes it fully. She might be nothing like who he imagines her to be, but the guy refuses to break his fantasy. In some cases, he forces the girl to be the one in his fantasy, when she does not, she becomes the villain. In extreme cases, she needs to be punished as well. After all, how can a girl refuse to comply with his imagination.
That is the gist of some bad experiences some girls face in life. Real life is not a romantic comedy. That is what 500 days of summer brings to light.
Tom Hansen is convinced that Summer is the one for him. This despite the fact that Summer tells upfront at the first instance and thereafter many times that she is not interested in a relationship with anybody, that she does not believe in love, and things like that. For most instances, it is only Tom and his unilateral fantasies which constitute a love story for him, but Summer was absent and not reciprocating at all. Tom is so intoxicated with his imagined love story that he refuses to see what is playing right in front of him. Summer has always been distant, unapproachable and not reciprocating from the beginning. She has been vocal about it at times.
Then, even after she is engaged, Tom believes that Summer is going to accept his proposal and goes to propose to her with flowers.
Finally when Summer is married, Tom sees the reality.
That is how Tom breaks his own heart. That is how some men break their own hearts and chase girls for years long after they should have stopped.
At the end of it all, Tom meets another girl Autumn and this time, he lives in the reality.
But the larger fact behind this whole one-sided crushes, unrequited love and fantasies, is "low self-esteem". It takes men who don't think much about themselves to put girls on a pedestal and worship them. It takes a guy who thinks he could not get anyone better or oh-so-awesome like this fantasy, to keep latching onto some girl who does not even fit in his fantasy. All of these is because the guy lacks confidence. Confident men know that they can easily get girls, they get to choose who they want.
I wish there are more movies like this one, reflecting the realities, in place of romantic comedies. Not to sound depressing, romantic comedies are good. But in real life, you get to create your own romantic story but make sure you create a real one instead of living a fantasy.
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