Bliss

Thirty-five years ago, I passed the point where drugs and alcohol brought me bliss and entered the hell of physical dependence without the payoff. I decided to stop, and every day clean felt like the pavement hitting me in the face. Eventually, the craziness of sanity was less than the craziness of intoxication, and reality became more normal than being high.

Anyone can do it, but most don't. They just like the fantasy more than life. My mother, two close friends, my cousins,, colleagues, etc. All stayed in the world of bliss until they died.

If you are using, stay here with the pain. Let it strip away from you the fantasy that is killing you. You deserve to live, and all you have to do is start where you are.

Now, about that movie. It's crap on a cracker, with the kind of mind-numbing insights people have when they are either newly sober or very, very stoned. There are better movies about addiction and mental illness, but what does it matter? If something in this movie gets through to you, use it as a way out. Get help.

This film is marketed as a sci-fi, altered reality adventure. It isn't. "Bliss" is a drug-induced hallucination from the perspective of a man who has lost touch with reality and fallen in love with an enabler. This is his struggle to regain his sobriety and reconnect with his estranged daughter. The film is a bit messy and the acting is simply passable... However, it is fresh and inventive, and it moves along swiftly.

Another creative wonder by Mike Cahill. Unless someone fully understands, or has/had addiction and/or mental health issues, this film may be confusing.

I like how Cahill thinks out of the box, and the way this story was portrayed, was genius, albeit flawed. His screenplay was somewhat all over the place, sloppy, and did have some plot and technical issues. The story didn't flow and transition as well as it could have, like it did in his earlier film, Another Earth. Although the pacing was slightly better in this one, it still needed improvement and less filler for the 103 min runtime. For me, this film missed the mark and had much more potential than what I saw. Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek were great in their roles, as were the rest of the cast.

It's a different film, but once you get what's going on, you'll appreciate it a little more. It's a decent one-time watch. So it's a 7/10 from me.

Mike Cahill never seems to disappoint me so far. All of his works are very creative and thought-provoking. This film is a truly awesome exploration of the human mind just like Enemy (2013) was, which is also an underappreciated and misunderstood film. There are at least 3 ways to interpret this film of what is real and what is fake, there are tons of hidden details which give hints. There's also tons of funny references to popular culture and some multiple-meaning themes as well. I say this is some fresh air in comparison to all the mindless films we get nowadays.

The review title contains the two films that blew my mind as much as this one did.

This film explores and exploits the idea of the unreliable narrator to the maximum. It poses questions, answers them, but then takes away the answers.

It keeps the two far sides of the possibility so precisely balanced and strong, that you could tie a string in-between, and the tension would be literally palpable. The tension that keeps guessing and wondering the entire film, until the Very Last Second.

It is incredibly dystopian but also utopian at the same time, and you can't help but feel for the unluckiest guy in the world, who might know the absolute truth.