so am i post-modern?

i loooove zooey deschanel. loved her in failure to launch and yesman. there's something so quirky and in-your face about her yet she is also very soft and feminine at the same time. so, when i heard that she is starring in the new semi-indie flick '500 days of Summer' i checked the trailer out.



click here for the full trailer. the movie is produced by fox searachlight which was responsible for juno, little miss sunshine, once, and slumdog millionaire. these movies i call semi-indie, as they employ an other-than-usual approach to filmmaking but with considerably higher budget than most indie films. '500 days of summer' looks promising enough, at least from the trailer. it has a nice atmosphere and color theme (i love the browns and the beiges). soundtrack is cool (the smiths, the clash, regina spektor, spoon, feist and simon and garfunkel?! what the...these are my people here! i nearly fainted). story line is something which every one can relate to at one point or another. and heck, zooey deschanel is reason enough to watch it.

oh, plus i love the writeup:

"Tom believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer doesnt. Not at all. But that doesnt stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world. The fuse is lit on Day 1 when Tom, a would-be architect turned sappy greeting card writer encounters Summer, his boss' breezy, beautiful new secretary, fresh off the plane from Michigan. Though seemingly out of his league, Tom soon discovers he shares plenty in common with Summer. By Day 31, things are moving ahead, albeit casually. By Day 32, Tom is irreparably smitten, living in a giddy, fantastical world of Summer on his mind. By Day 185, things are in serious limbo -- but not without hope. And as the story winds backwards and forwards through Tom and Summers on-again, off-again, sometimes blissful, often tumultuous dalliance--all of which adds up to a kaleidoscopic portrait of why, and how, we still struggle so laughably, cringingly hard to make sense of love and to hopefully make it real."

when i showed the video to her, toni made an observation that the movie looks very post-modern. last week, my architect colleague just explained to me during our rounds that that post-modernism in their field just means something that exists in defiance of modernism or anything that reverts to the classical and the traditional way of doing things. he said that post-modern architecture is an aberration, something which does not last 20 years, and therefore "utot lang sa buong sistema". i am not too keen in agreeing to that. i still believe that post-modern architecture is very respectable in its own right, at least for its courage and irrepresible search for the sublime.

i figured, post-modern in architecture won't help me figure out what toni meant. foraging through the recesses of my stock knowledge on political and literary theory therefore (because i majored in the former and minored in the latter), i tried to recall what post-modernism really means--to no avail. as i'm getting rusty, i consulted my old friend wiki instead:

"Postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, which was the basis of the attempt to describe a condition, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions (as in Giddens, 1990) as postmodernity."

and then toni explained: the movie is post-modern precisely because it has to look into self and explain/rationalize everything. the best example she says is moulin rouge--it is a story of someone telling a story.

i forget where but i read somewhere that american cinema is too bent on creating 'closure'. european cinema, on the other hand just does not care. in fact, the point of european cinema as an artform is to imitate life accurately. it leaves the audience with unanswered questions and agitation that accompanies these. i agree. when i am in want of mental stimulation, i turn to the subtitled obscure european films but when i want a feel-good movie with a good (even if it's not a happy) ending, i reach for hollywood. i don't know about '500 days of summer' i am bent on watching it on the big screen even though it's already available in internet live streaming sites. but i'm pretty sure it will have a good (even if it's not a happy) ending. and it's just in time because right now, it's what i'm sticking around for.