Bliss Review & Interview with Director Mike Cahill.

Bliss, which premieres this Friday, February 5th on Amazon Prime Video, is the third, fiction, feature film by writer/director Mike Cahill (Another Earth, I Origins). It stars Owen Wilson, Salma Hayek, Nesta Cooper and Jorge Lenderborg Jr. and is a modern, love story, redemptive father, sci-fi satire about differing realities and addiction.

If that sounds like a lot to cram into 1hr and 42 mins, don’t worry, it is all handled extremely well, paced perfectly and because it’s driven mainly by the characters, you discover just what the bleedin’ hell is going on as they do.

Think The Matrix meets Brazil but on a fraction of the budget, with zero kung-fu, more focus on the characters journey’s than the sledgehammer satire of Gilliam’s 1984-esque masterpiece and a delightfully loopy roller disco montage. Throw in a dollop of Permanent Midnight and you should be getting the idea. That’s not to say it is immediately derivative of any of those films, it’s just some cinematic shorthand to get us where we need to go.

Now, of course, sci-fi satires about addiction might not really be your thing - and Bliss isn’t going to change that - but if anything I’ve said so far intrigues you then keep reading.

Going in I’d be lying if I didn’t have low expectations, but, also, I didn’t really know what to expect. The cast seemed a little odd to me and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about any of it. I mainly dig Owen Wilson in his collaborations with Wes Anderson but haven’t really seen him tackle many serious leading man parts outside of his comedy work and, of course, Salma Hayek is wonderful in most things but put them together in an Amazon produced, ramshackle, predictable, alternate dimensions movie (as it seemed from the trailer) and how does that work?

I put it down to streaming syndrome. There are a lot of movies being produced right now that are jumping straight to streaming (just like the days of VHS) and because of digital photography tending to look a little samey, CGI effects generally being cheaper and a lot of once-A-List stars cropping up in them, you’d be forgiven - after watching a handful of them in good faith and being generally disappointed - for throwing your hands up and saying “to hell with it, I’m going to watch my Blu-Ray of Robocop for the 58th time”.

It’s why deadlines are good. Knowing I had an interview with the Director, Mike Cahill today, I watched the movie last night, gave it a fair shake and was pleasantly surprised.

You can listen to our quick interview with Director Mike Cahill below.
You can learn more about our interview podcast Booth Talk and where to subscribe to it here.

The first thing I’ll say to the audience member about to sit down and watch Bliss is - just go with it. I don’t know about anyone else but when I sit and watch a film like this I am sometimes jumping ahead in my brain and trying to figure out the riddle, or assuming, based on previous films I’ve seen, I know where this is all leading.

Don’t do that.

Follow Greg (Owen Wilson) on his journey and accept things as they happen - the movie and the characters will reveal themselves to you in due course.

The movie doesn’t stay in one place or with one concept very long and so take in what you can, when you can and appreciate the level of detail, the nerdy easter eggs and sly satire as they whizz past. Not that the film has a frantic pace per se, but it certainly moves. Helped, in great part, by the ball of irresistible energy and verve that is Salma Hayek as Isabel Clemens.

Most sloppy rom-coms ask you to buy that the leading protagonist will fall for their “soul mate” in a matter of scenes and with very little in the way of reason or evidence. Some films get away with this cliche by casting someone who is so magnetic and enthralling that you completely accept the seemingly instant infatuation.

For Bliss to keep revealing more secrets, exploring more ideas and constantly ladling on the world building - all the while breathlessly racing ever forward - you need, not just its protagonist but also, the audience to become completely enthralled and want to follow the character of Isabel anywhere, no matter how bizarre. Also for the love story to work along side an enabler metaphor, you need to want to go along with it.

Casting Salma Hayek then becomes this film’s masterstroke. She is part our guide, our lover and our inevitable downfall all in one.

Despite the fact that there wouldn’t have been a movie (or trilogy of movies with more to come), you’re not 100% sure that Neo is going to take the red pill when Morpheus offers it to him in The Matrix. When Hayek’s Isabel shows up in Bliss and slips you a yellow crystal mickey, you know you’re not putting up a fight. Such is her performance, her energy and her eyes. By the time she’s waving a gun around or shoving weird contraptions up your nose, you know you’re well and truly hooked.

The surprise here though is Owen Wilson. Asked to play the easily lead, daydreaming, confused, office schlub is, maybe, initially predictable for Wilson but as he falls further down the rabbit hole he is able to channel the manic and darker side of his “relentlessly optimistic” comedy persona to great effect.

It’s probably his single best performance next to a very different interpretation of an addict in The Royal Tenenbaums.

While mainly a two hander between Wilson and Hayek, rounding out the main cast, there is Nesta Cooper and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. playing Greg’s (Wilson) children. Cooper, as the daughter with an unwavering hope that her father will get better and come back to her, Lendeborg, in contrast, represents the son who has been let down one too many times. It is a testament to their performances and humanity - and the empathy that Director Mike Cahill and actor Owen Wilson encourage in their audience - that their pull, as the family you don’t want Greg to abandon, matches that of Isabel’s whirlwind.

Outside of the performances, the aesthetics of the film are pleasing too and clearly a lot of thought and work went into them.

The photography and colour grading choices between the grey, concrete, rundown world and the bright, crisp, fantasy (real?) world may be a tad obvious but they work and probably because they’re obvious. The too good to be true reality really needed to feel too good and have the tension underneath it that it could be soured at any minute.

However I am unsure that the grimy, rundown world had to be photographed quite so negatively. There were certainly moments where the beauty could’ve been highlighted amongst the grey urban sprawl - specifically in Isabel’s knick knacks, candles and fairy lights strewn camp under the freeway - I could’ve done with a good dose of Fisher King or Twelve Monkeys Gilliam here where the homeless city became a place of spectacle too.

And while the photography certainly leant itself to the tension, urgency and pace of the movie, I can always use more still, composed, on a tripod, widescreen photography. Handheld and steady cam is fine, it’s just in this day and age of everything being shot on digital, it can make some movies feel small or too much like TV shows.

The attention to detail in the sets deserve a particular shout out as it feels like there are lots of little meanings and clues scattered and hidden - in a wonderfully blink and you’ll miss them way - and everything has a real texture and even smell. There’s every attempt for you to feel and become involved with whatever reality our characters find themselves in. The logistics of matching certain elements to both realities must’ve been tough and yet are executed here seamlessly.

The last example I’ll give of an entire crew working together to effectively tell the story is the make up and costume dept. With very slight variants and subtle changes they show the passing of time, the state of mind of our characters, the realities they find themselves in and the place they are in their journey to marvellous effect.

Having watched Bliss last night and spoken to Director Mike Cahill today, he has proved himself to be a filmmaker full of ideas, enthusiasm and the talent of not only interesting, surprising and thoughtful casting but being able to get the best out of his crew to achieve the considerable task of telling a fairly complex and layered story with a light touch and at a decent pace.

The worst I can say about Bliss is that it’s not a great film exactly - although it’s certainly one of the better, newer “genre films with a message” knocking about the myriad of streaming services out there - but it is an ambitious and inventive film that deserves some recognition and good viewing figures.

When you listen to the interview (posted above) you’ll hear Mike say that the idea and the intention of the film was to provide a broad metaphor about people living in the same world but with different realities and that you could project whatever that means to you on the movie - the most obvious being the divide we see in America currently and the two sets of “facts” we are constantly blasted with.

I wouldn’t say that the movie achieves that but I also don’t think it needs to.

When read as a simple addiction allegory, then the film is a success. From the highlighting of a rehab clinic outside of Greg’s office building at the beginning, to the crystals the characters take to stay “real” and “strong”, to the very end of the film (which I won’t spoil here) the film seems to be leaning hard into the addiction metaphor - with Isabel as the enabler and Greg as the besotted addict falling ever deeper for her wild stories and schemes.

I think it’s a stretch to say that you could also read ideological, sociological, political, religious or any other kind of divided opinions or metaphors into the film as it stands. There is certainly a smattering of these in the dialogue and visuals and, I would definitely concede that, you could claim a broad reading of the story as a sort of “some people see the world as hell and some as heaven” and/or “the divide between the haves and have nots” but neither are as explored, interesting or performed as well as it being a sci-fi meditation on all aspects of addiction.

The movie definitely bites off a little more than it can chew in its running time and far be it from me - Mr. “Every modern movie could do with losing 30 minutes from its running time” - to say that a film should be longer but there are definitely enough ideas and scenarios here that deserve more depth and exploration in, say, a mini series or something.

However so few movies succeed at even being interesting or containing anything resembling an idea, so to say that a movie is a little flawed because it tries too hard to pack too much into itself or carry the weight of too many layered meanings, quite honestly, is something I’d welcome more of.

Bliss premieres this Friday, February 5th on Amazon Prime Video