Analysis of 'Paul' | How do people live after betrayal by a boss or the collapse of faith? “A way of thinking after the absolute has been broken”

“If the thing you consider absolute were to disappear tonight, what would you lean on to wake up tomorrow morning?”

There are probably few people who could answer that immediately if asked.

It could be God, the state, your boss, or your partner of ten years of marriage. Everyone has something they believe is 'the one thing that will never waver.' That is precisely why they can get out of bed in the morning.

But what if that were a lie?

The 2011 film 'Paul' poses this question directly while wearing the mask of a comedy. While scattering vulgar jokes and homages to sci-fi films, it is a work that shows, hidden within laughter, the steps of how a person can start living again in a 'world after the world has ended.'

Shorts, cigarettes, pistachios, and an alien

I will write a brief synopsis.

Two British geeks, Graeme and Clive, go on a pilgrimage to UFO holy sites in the American West in a rented camper van after attending Comic-Con in San Diego. It is a journey tracing the 'holy sites' for sci-fi fans one by one. Along the way, they encounter a real alien named 'Paul.'

Up to this point, it is a common story. However, the Paul who appears is not at all what one would hope for.

He wears shorts. He smokes cigarettes. He only tells vulgar jokes. There is even a scene where he boasts as a joke within the film that he was the one who gave Spielberg the idea for E.T. In short, he is a foul-mouthed middle-aged man who could be found anywhere around Los Angeles.

The premise that the two geeks had believed in—that 'aliens should be like this'—that they are sublime, mysterious, and beings that guide humanity—slips away in the first few minutes.

And there is another person whose world is collapsing. A woman named Ruth Buggs.

A woman who has lived with one eye closed

Ruth is a devout Christian who runs an RV park with her father. She firmly believes in creationism, denies evolution, and wears a T-shirt with a picture of 'Jesus shooting Darwin.'

And she is blind in her left eye.

Her father is a man of extreme, devout faith, bound by the idea of prioritizing God's will over medical care. That is the setting in the film. Ruth's blindness in one eye is related to her father Moses's 'distrust of medicine.'

In other words, Ruth is a woman who has lived literally seeing the world with one eye, supported by the three pillars of her father's faith, the absoluteness of God, and the idea that the world is 'a good thing ordained by God.'

Then, Paul appears.

Vulgar, foul-mouthed, and only spouting dirty jokes and flippant remarks—but clearly an intelligent life form from extraterrestrial origins that was 'not created by God.'

Ruth's world ends with that encounter.

Paul does not "deny God," he simply "stands nonchalantly next to God."

This is the strange part of this movie.

Paul doesn't try to refute the absence of God to Ruth with logic. He doesn't bother with such tedious things. He simply places his hand on her head and pours in the true scale of the universe in an instant—how stars are born, how life spreads, and how Earth is nothing more than a tiny puddle.

It's not a sermon; it's an overwrite of data.

And after that infusion, Paul heals Ruth's blind left eye. The eye that was bound by her father's faith and denied the opportunity for treatment is healed by an alien guy with a light touch.

This scene is incredibly cruel and incredibly kind.

"What was the thing I had been believing in?" Ruth freezes. But Paul brushes it off lightly, saying, "Evolution, baby." He has no intention of destroying her faith. He just happens to stand next to it, as a more concrete existence than God.

Doesn't this look similar in shape to the kind of "collapse of the absolute" that we encounter most often in our daily lives?

The morning the boss was embezzling

For example, try imagining a situation like this.

There is a boss you have respected ever since you joined the company. Someone who was strict at work, kind to people, cherished their family, and patiently faced you even when you were a junior. You built your foundation as a professional by watching their back.

One morning, when you arrive at work, you are informed that the boss has been embezzling expenses. For years.

At this moment, before the anger of "I can't forgive this" hits you, you are struck by a more bewildered feeling of "What was all that?"

Was that strict guidance real? Was that kindness real? Was the foundation of the work I built resting on a lie?

The landscape Ruth saw after meeting Paul is exactly this kind of scene. Her father's voice, the church hymns, the stories in the Bible—everything she thought was real suddenly wobbles.

Or, a smaller example would suffice. Even if it's not a major incident like embezzlement, moments where the standards you believed in suddenly become a blank slate are scattered throughout daily life.

The moment you realize, after being pointed out on social media, that the business etiquette you've been practicing for years as "common sense" was actually just an imposition by a specific generation. What was I doing, spending so much time carefully crafting the opening of my emails? That, too, is the same kind of event, even if the scale is different.

The "absolute" usually collapses even with small vibrations like this. Even without aliens arriving, we are always looking at the world with one eye half-closed. And one day, that eye suddenly opens.

"Is there no hell?"

Ruth's collapse scene is my favorite in the movie.

After her world ends, the first thing she does is curse. Using dirty words she had never uttered before.

Ruth tries out crude jokes that I cannot write in this article, one after another, with the awkwardness of a novice driver pressing the clutch.

This may look like just a crude comedy, but it is a surprisingly accurate depiction of human nature.

One day, the list of 'things you must not do' is wiped clean. You no longer know what is good and what is evil.

When that happens, people first try 'things that were previously forbidden.' Because you cannot create new standards without trying them.

Returning to the story of the boss whose embezzlement was discovered, you would probably do something similar. You might go home and drink a little more than usual, type 'job change' into your smartphone search bar and then delete it, or reread old messages for no reason.

That is not so much 'despair' as it is 'a verification process to see if there is still a foothold.'

The 'crude joke' Ruth shouted is the sound of a clumsy verification process. Having lost the ground that was God, she is confirming through the pronunciation of curses that her own feet can still move even without that ground.

A philosopher once said that what people must not do after the absolute collapses is to 'immediately jump into the next absolute.' If you escape into another doctrine in place of God, you will end up living with one eye closed again.

Ruth's father, Moses, does exactly this. At the end of the film, seeing Paul's healing ability, he reinterprets it, saying, 'The Lord has laid his healing hand.' Instead of abandoning God, he reinterprets Paul as a messenger of God to preserve his worldview. This is a typical escape route. Refilling a collapsed faith with another faith.

Ruth does not do that. She accepts Paul as 'just Paul.' Not a god, not a devil, just a foul-mouthed, good guy. As nothing more than that.

The nation was also a faith

Another highlight of 'Paul' is how the nation is depicted.

Chasing Paul are mysterious agents. They are constantly trying to capture Paul, the 'nation's top secret.' But in the end, an unexpected truth is revealed. The twist is that one of the agents, Zoil, was actually a collaborator who had been helping Paul escape from the inside.

The 'Big Guy' leading the nation is ultimately crushed and killed by the spaceship that came to pick up Paul.

In the brief moment the spaceship descends, the walls of the organization she built, the guns, and the titles are all crushed. That single image is incredibly eloquent. No matter how solid an organization may seem, in the face of cosmic absurdity, it is nothing more than a castle built on sand.

There is the police, the military, and the law. We unconsciously believe in the premise that our lives and property are protected beyond that. But in the presence of an external entity like Paul, that contract creaks and unravels.

This is also a continuation of the experience of losing God. Because 'the nation protects me' is one of the faiths of modern people.

It is the same feeling you get when, after watching news about an earthquake and having gone through evacuation drills many times, you realize that if that shaking really happened, you might not be able to escape. The premise that someone is protecting you thins out for a moment.

In the dry sunset

How do people live when the absolute premise of their life collapses?

The philosopher Camus wrote that in a meaningless world, people still push the stone. Meaning, he argued, is only born within the act of pushing itself.

This sounds like a noble answer, but in reality, it probably only answers half the question.

Ruth is no longer a daughter of God. She is no longer a creationist, nor is she a one-eyed woman. She has also become free from her father's control.

However, within that “freedom,” she also seems to be carrying a sense of loneliness. The film doesn't explain this through dialogue, but the color of the sky as she watches the spaceship leave seems to speak for it. That color is not the color of victory. It is the color of “not knowing yet whether you have won or lost.”

I think that is what it means to live in limbo.

You know that the ground beneath your feet is no longer absolute. So, with every step you take, the soles of your feet feel a little tense. But because you have lost the ground, you can see the sky better. You can see the stars better. You can also see the face of the person walking next to you properly. With both eyes.

Loneliness and comfort probably come from the same place.

When you have an absolute, it is easy. You don't have to think. The premise thinks for you. But when you lose that premise, your own footsteps, your own breathing, and the expression on the face of the person next to you suddenly become sharp and clear.

In the end, what Ruth taught me

We all pass through the experience of having something absolute collapse at some point in our lives.

The day you realized your parents were wrong. The moment you learned the organization you trusted was sloppy. The night you realized you could no longer believe in the God you once believed in. The Monday you found out the philosophy of the company you worked for for years was just empty words. Or, when you faced the fact that someone you thought was eternal was, one morning, no longer eternal.

If you watch 'Paul' as a comedy, it is certainly vulgar, messy, and at first glance, seems frivolous. Many critics point out that the sci-fi references are inside jokes, the portrayal of creationists is mean-spirited, and the ending is a convenient plot device.

But the trajectory of one woman, Ruth, from seeing the world with one eye to beginning to see it with both—that trajectory of just over a hundred minutes contains all the small steps for how we can find a new way to stand after we have lost our “absolute.”

First, look at the fact that the absolute has collapsed without deceiving yourself. Do not jump into the next absolute. After that, spend some time in the disorder, clumsily cursing. It is allowed. Then, try believing in the person right in front of you—not a god, not a nation, just a “good person.” And then, with your own footsteps, begin to redraw the map of the world once more.

Living in limbo is certainly lonely. But the sunset you see with both eyes has a slightly deeper color than the one you see with just one.