500 Days of Summer and unnecessary happy endings.

I liked it, I really liked this movie. What is not to like? It’s funny, and weird, and has two songs by the Smiths and two songs by Regina Spektor! What is not to like, seriously? Well, my tireless brain found something: the ending.

Of course, many people, even fans of the movie, have problems with the ending. They say (ehem! Spoilers!) that finding a girl called Autumn and starting a relationship with her only means that he will go through the same thing again. Others even point out that he is obviously not prepared for a relationship. The implications go further: he won’t find true love till at least he goes through two other girls, Winter and Spring!

I just feel the ending was unnecessary, both because it was a subversion of romantic movies’ clichés (though there are some with unhappy endings, sorta) and because the themes were the contrasts between dreams and expectations and also romanticism and realism. He is romantic (because he misunderstood The Graduate or something) and she is more negative toward relationships because her parents divorced. OK, the reasons are not important, what is important is that they seemed to be changing their views for the other's. She marries a guy she hardly knows and he is emotionally scarred from their relationship.

And I liked that, until the last ten minutes of the movie changed it. I quite like stories where protagonists are trying to change the other’s view and both get their objective, so they can’t be together anymore. And paradoxically, they have succeeded. I loved the structure and the realism of the story, I mean she has had a ridiculously romantic story with someone else and is very thankful to his ex and he is alone but trying to get a job he actually liked. Up until the end, when he also gets a new girlfriend. Just because.

But actually I’ve had this problem with other movies. It’s like the executives behind the movie or even the writers thought we would not accept that the protagonist doesn’t get love, even if it has to be at the end of the movie and with a new character we’ll never know. I guess that happens with so many movies I should have expected it, but they sold this movie as  something different.

This reminded me of Notes on a Scandal, though this case was much worse. The protagonist was a stalker who has befriended her crush, and throughout the film sets her traps to isolate her from her family so she would have to stay with her stalker, without even knowing it was her doing. I liked this plot, it was intriguing and it got me to understand the villain-protagonist, but that doesn’t mean I need her to have a happy ending or even want it. And, won’t you guess it, after all the shit she has done has been discovered and she’s alone again, she finds a girl sitting on a bench and invites her to the opera. And the girl accepts. I just don’t get it.

Anyway, I loved the rest of the movie, I’m listening to The Smiths again all the time and humming some of his songs when not, and I’ll rewatch 500 Days again. But next time I’ll stop it before the necessary happy ending. I’m not really angry with the movie, but it got me asking why? Why do they think viewers need a happy ending, no matter how implausible or unnecessary to the story? Especially in biopics, or movies based in real life events, like El laberinto del fauno. Yeah, makis, you’ve killed the fascist vicious villain, guess what, all of you are going to lose and be persecuted, so I tremble thinking about the future of that baby you’ve just kidnapped.