This is one of the best movies I've seen that shows an insight into addiction. It actually was very moving, and anyone who has experienced addiction personally or with a loved one, it likely will bring up many emotions. I would highly recommend this movie.
Plot summary
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.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
February 05, 2021 at 03:03 AM
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Brilliant but heart wrenching portrayal of addiction
Shades of Kubrick and Cronenberg
"Bliss" begins as a Walter Mitty-type film with a lazy, day-dreaming worker in an office drawing pictures of his fantasy home. It then takes the audience on a psychodelic journey of the mind.
The strength of the film was the good performances and some great location footage of Los Angeles. The filmmakers were striving for a style that combined the imagination of Stanley Kubrick and the weirdness of David Cronenberg.
The Kubrick-Cronenberg connection was apparent in the film's evocation of the macabre. The grisly death of Greg Whittle's boss; the pathos of an old woman on a walker knocked to the floor of a roler-skating rink; and an unruly mob at a party being separated like the Red Sea with a wave of Greg's hand, are all examples of something approaching dark comedy.
But unlike the profundity of a film by Kubrick or Cronenberg, the result of "Bliss" was an exercise in style over substance. The long and dull portion set in the fantasy kingdom of Dr. Isabel Clemens and Dr. Greg Whittle was was slow-paced and tedious and closer to a European art film.
It was clear that Isabel and Greg would eventually return to their homeless headquarters and that their supply of hallucinogens would eventually run out. The inconsequential theme of fantasy versus reality tried to hold the disparate elements of the film experience together.
By the end, Greg would appear to be under the care of a daughter who genuinely loves him. But, based on the depth of Greg's character flaws, it seems likely that he will blow his chance for recovery. The film is really about two luckless losers who went on a drug-induced stupor and essentially returned back to square one.
One day at a time
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.