I recently got the opportunity to hop on the phone withThe Half Of Itwrite-directorAlice Wuto talk about a whole bunch of things like her journey back to the film industry and also why she thinksLeah LewisandDaniel Diemerare standout stars on the rise, but now it’s time to get into the spoiler segments of our conversation. If you’ve yet to watchThe Half Of It, which is now streaming on Netflix, this is where we leave you because the rest of this article is all about one major plot point that occurs later on in the film.Spoiler Warning!
While Wu does take the time to establish that Squahamish is a very religious town, I was still really taken aback when Paul realizes that Ellie likes Aster (Alexxis Lemire) and tells her, “It’s a sin. You’re going to hell.” He’d been the ultimate nice guy from the moment we met him. He stands up for Ellie when she’s being bullied, he pours his heart and soul into trying to win Aster over and is just an all-around sweetheart. But now he’s about to shut Ellie out because of her sexual orientation?
It’s challenging topic to cover in a movie period, but to drop something like that in so close to the end of a movies hugely ambitious I had to ask Wu why she chose to place that huge moment for Paul and Ellie with just about 20 minutes of the film to go. Here’s what she told me:
ALICE WU: It was done on purpose. Because here’s the thing, I didn’t want this to be a story of this girl wakes up and has to contend with homophobia immediately. That’s all in there where she’s in denial about herself. The thing is, for me in particular - I’m glad you’re asking this because this really gets to the heart of why I set it where I did - I told you that when I finally started writing the first draft, Trump had already been elected and I was probably like a lot of people - it’s not like I didn’t know sexism and racism and homophobia existed, of course I know it existed, but I think I just assumed maybe just somehow I had come to this belief that we were always progressing as a country, and we’re all trying to work on it and we’re all getting better. I just somehow had sort of bought into this idea that there was some sort of progress in the way that we feel about these things. And after Trump got elected, I think I and many people were a little startled to discover, no, there are whole sections of the country who do not feel like that is something that maybe needs to be worked on. And for me, I at least very much want to believe that fundamentally we’re all good. I am a humanist, so my deep desire is to believe. Certainly I believe we’re all born good, for sure I believe that. But I also just feel like generally most people, given the resources, would choose to do the decent thing.
So there’s that part of me that thought, ‘What does this mean? Do I think all these people are bad?’ And the thing is, if I’m honest, I grew up in a very conservative Chinese family. My parents were totally racist and sexist and homophobic, and so was I. I grew up in that environment. And they’ve come a long way. And the thing is, do I think my parents are bad people? No. I think they’re wonderful people. But it made me realize like, ‘Oh. Really good people can have attitudes like this.’ And the thing is, even today, I would still say I’m sexist and racist and homophobic and transphobic, even though I’m an old Asian dyke, right? I still have these attitudes; I just have hopefully worked on them so much that mostly they’re gone. But every now and then, something pops up, right?
I don’t think it’s possible to be an American and grow up in this country and not have it imbued in you in some way. So given that, I then thought, ‘Well, okay, I have to believe that actually people are good in these different areas.’ That doesn’t mean that you might not have biases and prejudices. And so I very much was trying to use the character of Paul, I was like, ‘I’m gonna make people fall in love with this guy!’ [Laughs] You just love him! He’s the most emotionally intelligent character in the script! But that doesn’t mean, therefore, he’s some sort of deity who’s utterly enlightened. You can still be deeply loving and care so much, and still grow up with a deep prejudice.
And so that moment is designed to be shocking, but I feel like it’s real because in his head, he’s heartbroken not just for himself; he thinks his friend is going to hell, because that’s all he grew up knowing. So for him, it’s the double heartbreak of not just, ‘Oh, you’ve rejected me.’ It’s like his mind is blown and this person that he now loves is going to hell. I think for us, we want to be like, ‘What? A good person would never think that!' But I personally don’t think that’s true. I think there are probably plenty of good people out there who do think that. And if I want to try and reach those people - my goal is sort of to try and find a way for myself to understand, but also secretly, that’s also why I wanted Netflix over the theatrical option; I knew I was trying to reach as wide a group of people as I could.
And I also knew that people probably in more conservative areas were definitely not going to a Landmark Theater to watch this movie. But they might in the privacy of their home press play, right? And so my hope is that they’re going along, they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this feels like the town I grew up. Oh, I really like these characters, I’m with them on this ride.’ And then when that happens, have a moment … For me, where Paul really changes is in that conversation with the dad. When the dad says that thing about, ‘Have you ever loved someone so much you don’t want anything about them to change?’ That moment where these two men who both feel very inarticulate verbally, who both feel like they don’t know how to express themselves through words, actually have probably one of the most profound interactions in the film, and it’s not verbal.
When that happens, I think that also pushes him to his speech in the church. I guess it just comes from my own desire to try and understand something with as much empathy as I could, rather than judging it. And then, of course, my own philosophies are gonna come out whereI’m kind of like hoping that somebody watches this and it makes them think about that one kid that maybe is kind of different and is being teased, whether it’s because they’re an immigrant or they’re a person of color or they’re coming out about their sexuality or whatever it is. My hope is that in that shock you said, feeling the pain of that because you also hopefully fall in love with Ellie, seeing the pain of that might make you think.
