Monsters is a slight but beautiful film. It’s not really about alien invasions – it’s a road movie, a love story, and almost a political parable. The photography is stunning. The two main characters are just quirky and wounded enough to be interesting. You can see the trailer here (which pretends that it really is a film about alien invasions).
[WARNING: Minor plot spoilers follow]
The aliens are more than just wallpaper. They give the initial momentum to the plot, one or two small scares on the way (don’t worry – the film is only a 12A rating), and a slightly strained epiphany at the end; but that’s about it.
In a road movie you need to be running away or running home or both. But it doesn’t really matter what you’re running from. It could be a tyrannosaurus rex or a band of vigilantes or a wicked stepmother. It could be your past, or even your future.
The key is wanting to be somewhere else; and sometimes wanting to be someone else. That’s why we can identify with it even if we are not at this particular moment being threatened by aliens ourselves.
And in a love story, to the extent that we identify with one of the protagonists, we think we are longing for love. But it’s deeper than that. We project our own longing onto the story, whatever that longing is, and whatever the story is. And in fact the deepest longing is not a longing for this or for that, it’s a longing for the idea of fulfilment in itself – the ‘happy ever after’ of a fairytale or a romantic comedy.
It’s almost a longing to long for its own sake; a yearning that doesn’t actually want to latch onto anything concrete, because then it would limit itself. The road movie and the love story allow us to admit not just that we want more than we have, but that we want more than we want – and we don’t know what to do with that extra wanting. But to deny it would be to deny something fundamental about ourselves.
Bridges and Tangents 
I am sure we can all draw our own analogies to this yearning/longing/seeking. No matter who or what we are, we are all wanting and seeking for that which, perhaps we can achieve or recieve, or perhaps not. We all seek fulfilment. I often think that, as we grow, we do recieve things tangible and otherwise but we realise that, in order to be more fulfilled, we want more, whatever that is for each of us.
God Blessed limitless Love fundamental to our being/having been.
I have thought about this post now for days. Something is eating away at me that will not go away and that is because a grain of Truth is missing from the story. I have to challenge your theory……
“It’s almost a longing to long for its own sake; a yearning that doesn’t actually want to latch onto anything concrete, because then it would limit itself. The road movie and the love story allow us to admit not just that we want more than we have, but that we want more than we want – and we don’t know what to do with that extra wanting.”
The longing we long for is to be the closest we can possibly be to God, which although we can be close to Him, and feel His presence now, will ultimately happen after death. Life is a vehicle to feel and move closer to Him and I know from personal experience that there are certain times in life where we feel intimately close and one with Him, closer than ever before. Like when we are desperately and poignantly close with a Loved one who is on their death bed, or at the awesome and emotional moment of giving birth , and most definitely and most rarely when we fall in God with another being. Times of great spiritual awakening.
The trouble is that often we do not realise what falling in God really is until it truly and finally happens upon us. That is why when we intimately express our Love for another being, when we become one with them, and we become a part of creation, and when we get it right ultimately God and us become one in triune.
And when we authentically and truthfully follow our deepest instincts, when we listen to God not only from outside ourselves by the things which inspire us, but from beyond the deepest place within, we feel this drawing closer to the ultimate encounter, and our deepest longing is fulfilled.
In fact having felt intimately close with God during certain times of my life. It is an absolute Truth that although some of these times were incredibly intensely painful, they were all times of revelatory authentic intense Love.
As well as His gentle daily presence, He operates awesomely and intimately beyond the man made laws and restrictions of Daily life. Thank God x