from Markus Tschiedert
February 18, 2021, 12:47 p.m.
The film with Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek follows in the footsteps of «Matrix». But then comes the qualitative crash.
What is real, what is simulated, what just comes from our imagination? Questions that science fiction films have repeatedly grappled with and thus repeatedly activate the recipient’s imagination. So the new Amazon Studios production “Bliss” starts out very promisingly when there are doubts at the beginning whether the gray, desolate world that surrounds the two protagonists is really real. Doesn’t it have to be a lot more colorful and cheerful as a person would wish it to be?
But if you whistle in yellow crystals, you can see through everything, can even dominate the simulated world and find entry into the apparently so much more beautiful world. That sounds suspiciously like «Matrix», that science fiction masterpiece from 1999, where Keanu Reeves has the choice between the blue and the red pill. But only the red pill reveals reality to him, which is, however, the more bleak one. So director Mike Cahill (“Another Earth”) has copied a lot, but wants to go somewhere else, which then has little to do with science fiction.
Salvation for a battered man
Greg (Owen Wilson) is about to be in ruins. His wife has left him, and he is immediately fired from his boss’s office. However, his boss suffers a fatal accident that could also be interpreted as murder. Greg escapes to a bar and meets Isabel (Salma Hayek) there, who knows about his troubles and offers him a way out. With supernatural powers she makes sure that the corpse falls out of the window and that everything looks like suicide.
Greg is grateful to her, but doubts when Isabel tries to make him know that everything around her comes from a computer simulation anyway. Only he and she are real. Ingesting yellow crystals would help Greg see the truth. The skeptic does not hesitate long and in fact he also has powers that make everything possible. As if that weren’t enough, Isabel takes him into the real world, where everything is just as Greg always imagined in his dreams. In this world, Greg is a famous inventor and Isabel is a successful scientist. But here too there are problems that both of them have to deal with.
Reality or Utopia? 
Whereby these problems contribute nothing to the point and simply lead nowhere. Because from this point you have long since seen through that both Isabel and Greg have completely lost touch with real life. Yes, it is no longer a question of whether and how the two cross the threshold between reality and utopia, because it no longer seems to exist. Director Mike Cahill only lets glimpse through where reality seems to be when we perceive his protagonists in a neglected state. At this point at the latest it becomes clear that we are basically dealing with a hopeless drug drama.
We experience two people who are no longer in control of their situation and who have lost themselves in a labyrinth of daydreams and illusions. As a spectator, we were initially set on the wrong track to enter this labyrinth ourselves. In this respect, Greg and Isabel manipulate us because we are still ready to follow them in the first 30 minutes.
Big names instead of big effects
It might have turned into an exciting film if the audience had become even more involved in this game of illusions. Instead, Cahill quickly decides to want to confront us with the facts of his story. As soon as this is clear, you feel all the more manipulated in the cheapest way if the initial gloomy mood was actually only created with the fact that the color was probably reduced to a minimum with the slider. That the world favored by Greg and Isabel is a fake can be seen because in this sun-drenched wonderland seem ghostly figures buzzing through, which are recognizable by computer simulation.
Cheap tricks that don’t even make sense because the game with illusions stopped earlier – and the audience is no longer impressed by them. In order to impress at all, two seasoned actors were hired: Owen Wilson, who recommended himself as a comedian over 20 years ago with “My Bride, Her Father and Me” or “Zoolander”, but has also shown himself in more serious roles since “Wunder” , and Salma Hayek, who is sometimes weird, sometimes sexy ?? a repertoire that she skilfully plays from “From Dusk Till Dawn” to “Frida”.
Conclusion: In the first 30 minutes the plot is still reminiscent of «Matrix». But instead of a clever science fiction story, a tragic addictive drama emerges that does not lead to any new knowledge.
“Bliss” can be seen on Amazon.
– .
