Tuesday, February 2, 2010

(500)


Oh where to begin on this one. I was reading the obituary today for J.D. Salinger in the NY Times and it got me thinking about the references (500) Days of Summer made to the writer and other cultural references in general.

-For one, Tom is explaining to his younger sister how perfect he and Summer are for each other. "We talked about Bananafish for like 20 minutes. We're so compatible it's insane." This refers to The Salinger book 9 Stories* where one of the stories is called "A Perfect Day with Bananafish".
-Zooey Deschanel was actually named after the Salinger character from "Franny and Zooey".
-The character Summer spoke of reading "Dorian Gray" which was an Oscar Wilde novel.
-The character Tom is loosely based off of Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" who was described as "the first unrequited love protagonist" by the movie's director Mark Webb.
-Summer's apartment was packed full of pop culture references like a print of the painting Blue Vase by Cezanne.
-It was mentioned briefly that Summer liked the painters René Magritte and Edward Hopper. Her love of the former is shown later in her apartment when she has a derby hat with a green apple on top of it, alluding to the painting "Son of Man".
-The silent films shown with JG Levitt playing chess with a little boy is definitely in reference to Ingmar Bergman's classic film the Seventh Seal.

There are so many other aspects of the film, but I think you get the idea. So many layers and textures with these pieces, it makes the film that much richer and more special.


*Another note, for any Capote fans out there, the writer Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany's wrote a book called "Nine Lives". They seem to be similarly set up as Salinger's book so I wonder if it was intentional on Capote's part to make that reference.

*Addendum. The photo above I believe is also a reference to François Truffaut's short film Les Mistons.

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