(500) Days of Summer is a movie about the relationship between Tom Hansen and Summer Finn which lasts five hundred days. They demonstrate Mark Knapp’s Relationship Model stages of coming together and coming apart while Summer deals with a dialectic tension throughout the film. Tom Hansen and Summer Finn do not progress normally through Knapp’s Relationship Model. They both go through the first two stages of coming together at the same time, but then deviate and move onto different stages. Summer goes through two stages of coming together: initiating and experimenting, and although she exhibits parts of the intensifying stage, she does not entirely move on to the intensifying stage. She immediately moves from the experimenting stage and enters the differentiating stage and stays there for the rest of the film. While Tom goes through four of the coming together stages: initiating, experimenting, intensifying,
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This is seen when Tom and Summer meet for the first time in the elevator. Tom is seen inside the elevator with his headphones on. Summer enters and upon recognizing the music she says she loves The Smiths. Tom asks if she likes The Smiths to which she sings a couple of lines of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” then steps out of the elevator. This polite conversation continues onto the next stage of coming together, the experimenting stage. Our lecture notes define the experimenting stage as the stage where they share similarities and interests. They enter the experimenting stage at the office party. They formally introduce themselves. Tom asks her why she moved to New York and why she would work at a card making company.
At the same time that Summer is stuck in the differentiating stage Tom moves on to the intensifying stage and demands to know what they are and ask to make the relationship more
This is seen when Tom and Summer meet for the first time in the elevator. Tom is seen inside the elevator with his headphones on. Summer enters and upon recognizing the music she says she loves The Smiths. Tom asks if she likes The Smiths to which she sings a couple of lines of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” then steps out of the elevator. This polite conversation continues onto the next stage of coming together, the experimenting stage. Our lecture notes define the experimenting stage as the stage where they share similarities and interests. They enter the experimenting stage at the office party. They formally introduce themselves. Tom asks her why she moved to New York and why she would work at a card making company.
At the same time that Summer is stuck in the differentiating stage Tom moves on to the intensifying stage and demands to know what they are and ask to make the relationship more