A mind-bending love story following Greg who, after recently being divorced and then fired, meets the mysterious Isabel, a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Doubtful at first, Greg eventually discovers there may be some truth to Isabel’s wild conspiracy.
Cast & crew political lean — 2 of 15 researched: 2 left · 0 center · 0 right · 0 no public record. Based only on cited public statements, endorsements, and documented donations.
Notable quotes
“Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.”
— Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, (verse 202), translator: Narada Maha Thera
“What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.”
— Randolph Sinks Foster, p. 305, as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
“Ecstasies enjoyed by religious mystics are usually called religious experiences no matter what the nature of the ecstasy or the trigger inducing it.”
“A shoemaker who loses himself in mystical ecstasy and begins to think of himself as a saviour of the people, sent by God, will inevitably cut the soles the wrong way and mess up his stitches. As time goes on, he will be faced with starvation. It is precisely by this process, on the other hand, that the politician becomes strong and rich.”
Article
Bliss is a 2021 American drama film written and directed by Mike Cahill. It stars Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek, and follows a middle-aged man (Wilson), recently divorced and estranged, who suffers a psychotic break when he is fired from an unhappy job. Befriended by a homeless woman (Hayek), he gradually falls deeper into what appears to be drug addiction. He struggles to discern reality from fantasy. It was released on February 5, 2021, on Amazon Prime Video, and received mostly negative reviews from critics, who compared it unfavorably to The Matrix.
Contents
Plot
Greg Wittle spends his work hours daydreaming and drawing. After he is called to his boss's office, forgetting his wallet on his desk, Greg's wallet glitches out. Greg discovers his medication cannot be refilled without a doctor represcribing it. After he is fired, he accidentally kills his boss and conceals the body before leaving the office for the bar across the street.
In the bar, he meets Isabel, who appears to know what he has done. She speaks about having created this world with unintended consequences. In exchange for doing her a favor, she telekinetically makes Greg's boss's death look like a suicide. After they leave the bar, a walking woman appears from nowhere multiple times. After Isabel sells Greg's cell phone, she takes him to a tented area. There, she offers him yellow crystals and teaches him how to manipulate the world telekinetically.
— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933), p. 380.
“Nirvana is a state of pure bliss and knowledge. ... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further ... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.”
— Erwin Schrödinger, writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore
“Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith suggested to me a great, a stupendous idea to the realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life. This is the idea—the founding of a new religion corresponding to the development of mankind: the religion of Christ, but purged of all dogma and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but realizing bliss on earth.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Journal Entry, 1855, cited in Selected Essays (New York: 1964), p. v
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
After an altercation at a roller rink in which he and Isabel telekinetically trip a bully, he watches police arrest the bully, only to discover himself in the back of the squad car. Greg is released and his daughter Emily searches for him.
While Isabel gets more crystals, Emily spots Greg on the street and attempts to rescue him. She gives him her phone number and asks him to call her. One day, he wakes up in Isabel's tent and finds her absent but sees his drawings out and tacked up. Greg finds Emily's phone number and calls her, but gets the answering machine. When he returns, Isabel is there, upset that he called Emily, asserting she is not real. Isabel decides she needs to prove what reality is to him. She plans to eject them both out of this "false" world using blue crystals.
After snorting the blue crystals, they wake up attached to a giant computer along with several others. He is told that he has been experiencing a simulation within a Brain Box created by Isabel to study alternate realities and their effects on the human brain.
Isabel reveals they are a couple in this world and takes Greg home, showing him his drawings were recreations of this setting. Greg does not remember this world, and Isabel says that after a long, dark period of poverty, most problems on Earth were eliminated, allowing humanity to flourish. Greg still has vivid memories of the simulation, but Isabel warns him it pulls tricks on the user.
A gala is thrown for the Brain Box. During the celebration, Greg wanders off and encounters a ghostly Emily, who implores him to come back to her. Isabel begins to see elements from the simulation leak into her view and hypothesizes they need to go back into the simulation and take more blue crystals in order to fully exit it.
Back within the simulation, Isabel gets more crystals, but commits a murder in the process. The police pursue them. At her tent, Isabel finds that there are only enough crystals for one of them to leave. Greg suggests Isabel kill him since he believes real people cannot die in the simulation, but hearing Emily, who has tracked him down, Greg insists Isabel go back alone, which she accepts.
Isabel distracts the police long enough for Greg to escape to a rehab clinic, admitting that he believes that his daughter Emily is real. Sometime later, Greg reconnects with Emily.
Production
In June 2019, it was announced Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek had joined the cast of the film, with Mike Cahill directing from a screenplay he wrote and Amazon Studios distributing the film. Cahill managed to cast the two lead actors before they had seen the script, based on a twenty minute pitch.
Principal photography began in Los Angeles in June 2019. Filming also took place in Split and on the island of Lopud, Croatia. The tune 'You and I', which is part of the soundtrack, was performed by Morcheeba lead singer Skye Edwards.
Release
The film was released on February 5, 2021 by Amazon Prime Video.
Reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 28% approval rating based on 103 reviews, with an average rating of 4.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "When it comes to building an entertaining sci-fi drama around some cool ideas, this Bliss is largely ignorant." Metacritic sampled 21 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, and called it "schmaltzy and pointlessly confusing." Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "As with both of his previous works, the filmmaker delivers an undeniably ambitious mind-bender that bites off more than it can narratively chew."
Andrew Barker of Variety wrote: "Cahill gets so bogged down in hair-splitting rules and exposition that he loses track of the bigger themes."
Article from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), where it is maintained by volunteer editors.
Trailer
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