In September
I wrote a brief review of the movie (500) Days of Summer. I was (and still am) a fan of the movie, no matter how sad some moments are. In several parts of the movie, including one of the final, most telling scenes, Summer and Tom share a park bench overlooking downtown
Los An
geles. It seemed like such a serene place. In the middle of the hustle and bustle of downtown Los Angeles, there is this park that you can relax, slow
down, and get a view of downtown. As soon as I saw that park, I wanted to find it. This past weekend, I did.
The park is better known as Angel Knoll, right in the heart of downtown LA. It’s much smaller than it appears in the movie (I at least thought it was much more vast in the movie). Yet, when I walked down the slight decline from where I parked my car on Olive St, I knew I had found it. I sat down on a bench and just relaxed. My mind went blank. I just sat there, a partial smile on my lips, with a feeling of inexplicable happiness. How could a simple site from a movie make me feel like this? I don’t know. I just know that I sat there for probably 45 minutes, gazing out at the buildings, feeling the crisp “winter” air of Los Angeles hit my face, and smiling. I didn’t worry about hypothetical life situations, I didn’t worry about my future, I didn’t worry about the present. I just sat there, relaxed…which is a rarity these days. Tom Hansen was right when he said, “It just makes you feel… peaceful.”
*First scene in clip, 9 seconds, shows a brief shot of the park in the movie.
