The Cloverfield Love Posit

This is not a review.

I hated Cloverfield. I am not a fan of POV camera work and I’m not a fan of monster films either. So Cloverfield was totally the wrong movie for me in all aspects. It simply wasn’t worth my hard-earned TF. But I gave it a chance. I went to watch it because of jj abrams and matt reeves. You know these two. Their names ring a bell; you just don’t remember where or when you might have encountered them.

If you were a teen-ager and/or a college student of the late 90’s, you will remember that one hit show about a girl who went to medical school just to follow a boy whom she thought was her destined one. Yes, that one with the name of the eponymous lady lead as the title. Felicity. Who could forget Felicity? Long curly hair, works at a coffee shop, went to NYU, all because of a guy named Ben. Oh, admit it. You loved it so much back then. I did.

Felicity was a show created by jj abrams and matt reeves. I know, right. I had the same reaction when I first found out. The jj abrams who gave us Mission Impossible III is the same guy who made us all feel icky and mushy in 1998. So when I found out that it was this same team that’s behind Cloverfield, I just had to see it. More than to see whether matt reeves can deliver, I had a nagging suspicion about the real intention of the film.

And maybe I’m right. Either that or I’m extremely over-reading.

At the surface, Cloverfield is a sci-fi, high on action, blockbuster kind of movie. Very Jerry Bruckheimer-Michael Bay kind of formula, except that there aren’t any big names in it. If we only dwell on this much of the film, then you might say that this one totally sucked big time. I, too, was guilty of this myopia at first. Disappointing. Nauseating. Old. That’s what I thought. And to think I held high regard for the tag-team behind this box-office winner.

I was so disappointed that I really went into thinking about the film long after I left the cinema. I thought to myself, how could the genius of abrams and reeves let this happen? They must be up to something. There has to be more to this if they thought this was brilliant.

After hours of over-analysis and over-reading, I came upon my conclusion (or should I say, pseudo-discovery). Indulge me.

Cloverfield is not a monster movie at all. It is not even an action movie or a sci-fi take on terrorism (as some have surmised in earlier reviews). No. I don’t think so. Cloverfield is one huge visual metaphor inasmuch as it is also a brilliant anthro-socio commentary. The monster, the annihilation of Manhattan, the apocalyptic milieu—these are all just peripheral plot McGuffins*. These are all necessary elements to drive home a point. And this is where the genius of abrams and reeves really hit gold. They show us what we wouldn’t normally see by adding familiar bells and whistles. Then we see it.

With Cloverfield, we learn that the tragedy of an apocalypse is not that the world is about to end. But, rather, how we have wasted all our lives putting everything for later, thinking we will always have another tomorrow. How hard is it to admit that you love someone? Or that someone means so much to you? What we fear doing now may not be relevant anymore by the time we have gathered enough guts to do it later.

We are lucky that sometimes the monster comes and destroys the city. This gives us a sense of urgency. For some reason, the urgency gives us guts. Then we become slightly adventurous, at least enough to admit and profess our love to someone. But most of the time, the monster never really gets here. So love never gets professed. Some affection never gets to the object. Some dreams never get realized. Until it’s all too late. (Maybe that’s why we created Valentine’s Day, so that we are assured of at least once a year for the monster to come and nudge us out of complacency.)

I remember an anecdote I was once told. It was about a prom queen (who was also the student council president) and the team captain of the men’s basketball team. The Team Captain loved the Prom Queen very much but was highly intimidated of her achievements. He never spoke to her about his feelings. Nothing really happened between them until they all went to separate colleges and never saw each other again. Few months after college graduation, the Team Captain met Prom Queen’s best friend. As he was still not over her, Team Captain asked about Prom Queen. And what the Best Friend said ruined Team Captain for life. She said, “Well, after four years of college, she’s finally  over you.”

Oh well.

Cloverfield cleverly sugarcoats this carpe diem message by making people think that they’re in for an action-packed sci-fi movie. Well, the movie does pack a wallop but unknowingly, the audience gets something else. An imperative suggestion is being stealthily offered; i.e., never miss an opportunity to tell someone how much you love them. And if you got this, good for you. If not, go and watch Titanic.

*A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise.