Directed by: Mike Cahill
Starring: Salma Hayek, Owen Wilson, Madeline Zima and Nesta Cooper
Runtime: 103 minutes
Available to stream on Amazon Prime on Feb. 5th

by Matt McCafferty, Staff Writer

On paper, Bliss sounds like it has the potential to be something special. After recently being divorced and then fired, Greg (Owen Wilson) meets the mysterious Isabel (Salma Hayek), a homeless woman who proposes that the run-down world around them is nothing but a computer simulation. The simulation exists so that a person can appreciate the real world—a much more glamorous world to be living in. In other words, the simulation’s purpose is to remind people that things could always be worse. Not only did this concept lure me in, but director Mike Cahill also wrote and directed Another Earth, one of my favorite films of 2011. Unfortunately, Cahill’s ambitious approach to storytelling just didn’t work for me this time around. 

My biggest issue was the immense effort that it took to keep up with all of the rules that were continuously being established in terms of being in the simulated world vs. being in the real world. The closer you get to the end of the film, the more exhausting it all feels. There’s even a romance subplot between Hayek and Wilson that never felt like anything worth caring about. It just gets lost in the chaos of the ongoing sci-fi concept explanations.

There’s a moment after Salma Hayek’s character carries out another unexplainable action where Owen Wilson says to her: “It’s starting to feel like you’re making this up as you go along.” And as a viewer, I had that exact thought several times up to that point. It felt like they were working without a script at times. Here’s another quick quote from Owen Wilson’s character as he tries to explain a few things: “Dr. Clemens posits that these memory echoes from the brain box world will fade away. They are just a side effect from not having enough blue crystals.” If you think watching the movie will help clarify what he said, it won’t. It’s confusing with or without context.  

Getting back to the plot for a moment; Salma Hayek’s character turns out to be a doctor. She even shows Greg how to move objects with his mind in the simulated world. Once she brings him out of the simulation and into the much more appealing real world, he feels a sudden sense of relief away from his life in the simulation. However, things get complicated when he has to make a decision about seeing his daughter from the simulated world, Emily (Nesta Cooper), someone who he isn’t sure actually exists. There’s the question as to which reality is real. The movie tries to deliver a message here (related to how we see the world around us and what we perceive as the most important things in our lives?), but it gets lost in the convoluted story. 

The first thirty minutes or so are the strongest of the film. Director Mike Cahill does a great job setting up a real sense of mystery before things take off into madness. Owen Wilson’s character spends his time at his desk job drawing mysterious pictures of what he calls “The Peninsula.” These are images of vivid dreams that he can’t seem to shake. There’s also a frantic energy to the introduction that I liked a lot. It reminded me a bit of Punch-Drunk Love. That’s the one and only comparison that I can make between these two films, but this beginning section is probably the only part of Bliss that will actually stick with me over time.

Even though I didn’t end up positive on this film, I will still give director Mike Cahill his credit for trying to create such an original story. Unfortunately, it ends up being a little too ambitious for its own good. But given how much I like Another Earth, and how much I appreciate Cahill’s creative approach to filmmaking, I will surely check out whatever he puts out next.