Okay, so I was completely thrown by Paul trying to kiss Ellie the first time watching The Half of It (2020). It just felt so out of left field and I was just like, “Dude! What are you doing?” He’d literally just gotten together with Aster. How did he all of a sudden like Ellie?
Even Paul asking her if there was someone else was so shocking because it’s like: “You dummy! Aster!” (And it’s funny because not only did that question apply to Ellie, it applied to him as well. The dialogue in this movie was so on point.) He and Aster were a thing now. That’s what all of this had been for. But on the second watch, I realized that Paul’s feelings for Ellie had had a natural buildup and progression.
Truthfully, he was never in love with Aster and he and Ellie both knew it. Like Ellie said, they had nothing in common and the person that Aster had been corresponding with was not Paul. He was never going to convince her otherwise because he hadn’t even been privy to half the conversations Ellie and Aster were having (nor was he really interested). He was quite literally “hid[ing] behind other people’s words.” Ellie was the one carrying that relationship.
It was only through his bonding moments with Ellie that Paul began to understand what love actually was. He had a much easier time talking to her during their ping-pong sessions; he asked her about herself and her family; he actually listened to and understood the metaphor she explained to him about Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit; he listened to her sing at night when he took out the trash. He helped her find clothes that suited her and saved her from embarrassment at the talent show, showed signs of jealousy when Trig called Ellie “hot”, and let her crash at his place when she drank too much at the senior after-party. I think the letters he found in her bag afterwards were what solidified things for him: Ellie had initially dismissed and rejected his taco sausage, but once she tried it, she started writing to all of these food critics to get his name out there. (And we know Ellie’s a fantastic writer, so she made his chances ten times better.)
Ellie had invested so much time and care coaching and training Paul to give him even an eighth of a chance with Aster, despite knowing he was “probably gonna crash and burn.”
While he did get a second date (again, because Ellie saved his butt), his in-person dynamic with Aster did not improve and Alexxis Lemire noted the disconnect in that scene where Aster gives Paul the painting after her day (read: date) with Ellie. She was looking for that pensive, insightful person from her letters and kept coming up blank.
Later, Paul was much more interested in knowing that Ellie was going to be at his football game than Aster. When Ellie said that Aster had wished him luck, the first thing he did was ask Ellie if she was coming. And though he waved at Aster in the stands, he paid way more attention to Ellie, even becoming so distracted that she had to signal for him to pay attention to the game.
Then, instead of meeting Aster afterwards like he’d promised, he went to find Ellie getting Yakult from the vending machines. He didn’t seem the least bit upset about Aster walking in on their almost-kiss because his crush on her was gone. He’d developed feelings for Ellie while Ellie had fallen for Aster.
While Paul did in fact love Ellie, I think he confused platonic love with romantic love and wrongfully assumed that Ellie felt the same way for him. Heck, even Ellie’s dad thought they were together!
But I think the sweetest thing ever was Paul admitting that he loves Ellie platonically when he accepts that she’s gay. He doesn’t say, “I never want to be the guy that stops being friends with someone for loving the way they want to love.” He says, “I never want to be the guy who stops loving someone for loving the way that they want to love.”
He accepts Ellie for who she is, accepts her feelings for Aster, and opens up the floor for their joint confession about the letters.
Good on you, Paul Munsky. Good on you.
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