The Beautiful Friendship Representation in the Movie “The Half of it”
Dear Alice Wu (aka director of the movie) I’m gonna need the other half of the movie soon ;)
I finished watching the movie last night with hopes of it being a light, happy, feel good movie like the movie “Love, Simon”, and surprisingly I got much more than I bargained for. By the way, if you haven’t watched “Love, Simon” please do. It’s such a good movie when you’re feeling down and when you need a quick pick me up. It’s also a coming out gay movie. And the message is great too. But the “The Half of it”? Everyone’s going to relate to it.
I’ll be honest, I’m as single as a pringle could be. And I’ve had my fair share thoughts of “when will I meet my soulmate?” and “how much longer do I have to wait until the meeting?” and so on and so forth. And the opening monologue of the movie addresses this. We’re half of a soul wondering the earth searching for our other half. And this led me to believe that this movie is about love and finding one’s soulmate but I was wrong. It was about relationships (with your partner, friends, family etc).
Our main protagonist Ellie Chu is a shy, introverted, straight A student. But let’s also not forget she’s Asian American and I’m all about the Asian representation in big media. She has a side business by writing other student’s essays during her spare time (3 pages for $10 and anything between 3–10 pages for $20). But this comes to a halt when our next character Paul Munsky comes into the picture to request Ellie to write a letter to his high school crush, Aster Flores. This is when our three character’s lives become intertwined into one.
A lot happens during the course of this movie between these 3 characters. Ellie and Paul discovers friendship, and Paul’s character develops immensely whereas Ellie discovers her first real love towards someone. But nothing beats the friendship development between Ellie and Paul and I had to make a list of what makes their friendship so great. Please find the list below:
Also, am I the only one who thinks that Aster had taken an interest into Ellie way before anything had developed between Aster and Paul? just look at the scene below and tell me I’m not the only who’s seeing this. They steal glances at each other a second too long. I cannot be the only one who thinks this.
In the end, Paul discovers that Ellie has feelings for Aster and Aster realizes that she’s been exchanging letters and texts with Ellie instead of Paul. With all movies everything comes full circle and Ellie confesses everything in a church full of the entire town. In the great words of Ellie Chu “Love is messy, horrible…and bold”.
Ellie and Aster come to terms and they kiss before departing their separate ways to pursue their individual journeys at college.
Friends Ellie and Paul on the other hand bid their last farewell at the train station where Ellie is leaving for college. It’s a sweet scene because Paul recreates the scene from the movie Ek Villain that they watched at Ellie’s house. The man in the movie runs beside the train as the woman inside the train is seen upset about this departure. The same goes for Ellie and Paul as Paul runs alongside the train. I assume that Paul has developed feelings for Ellie despite knowing that she’s gay. But I guess we won’t know for sure until there’s a second movie.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie because of its exploration on relationships and friendships. And I have to say my favorite part was the unlikely friendship between Ellie and Paul more than the romantic parts. However, the movie felt very incomplete to me :( and maybe that’s how we’re suppose to feel based on its title and theme but I need more. I do hope there’s a second movie because I believe our three characters deserve their individual happy endings whether its through finding their other half or not. I do hope we can come to some kind of a resolution.
A message to all my hopeless romantics out there. Always try. If you have a crush or someone you like, please tell them. If there’s anything this movie has wanted to teach us is that doing nothing is worse than not trying. If you don’t, you’ll never know. Who knows that person may just share the same feelings for you. And with that I leave you all with the following quote.
