3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bliss

2021, Mike Cahill (Another Earth) - Amazon

When we discussed Cahill's other work that we both watched, we talked about the dramatic VS the science-fiction, in that the SciFi elements of the movie play a significant part but the real core to the movie is the drama of the events being played out. Again, here, that applies, possibly bleeding so far as to be only allegory.

Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson, Marmaduke) works a shitty mid-management job at a tech support company. Recently separated from his wife, his daughter is reaching out to ask him to come to her graduation. Meanwhile, he is ignoring calls as he doodles another world, another life, one more sublime and... more exotic than this shitty real world. It gets him fired. As he is being fired, he accidentally kills his boss. Or knocks the man unconscious. Who knows; Greg never checks but hides the man behind the curtains and heads across the street to a bar. Greg makes bad choices.

We should also make note that Greg crushed a pill under a credit card and snorted it. For his 'bad leg' or so he tells his daughter. But let's hand wave that away and focus on the SciFi. In the bar, Isabel (Salma Hayek, Joan is Awful) tries to get his attention, surprised he is "real" and then shows him what she can do to "not real" people - a simple wave of her hand sends a tray flying from the hands of a waitress. Cahill is setting us up in a Matrix style simulation, that for some reason, Isabel is running around being a homeless person inside of. And she coaxes Greg to come along, seducing him with her "magical" abilities and by being Salma Hayek. Greg seems OK with being dragged along, whether he believes the simulation bit or not.

The movie leads along as if this is a movie about an advanced simulation world, but the clues are always there that Things Are Not Quite As They Seem. And not the way you expect. Doubling down, Greg and Isabel leave for The Real World, the one from his drawings, but even if you ignore the unrealistic utopian vibes, that world seems less real than the simulation. People talk and act like they are NPCs; the dialogue and situations always seem.... off. Being a devotee of simulation fiction, I honestly was dragged along like the rest of the audience, expecting a layered reality... sorry, a layered simulation, like in Black Mirror. But reality is depressing.

The drama of this movie was not as alluring, captivating, as Another Earth and, TBH I put that entirely on Wilson and Hayek. They just weren't gripping as their characters and the sad sad lives, simulated and real, they were living were just mundane. In the end I didn't like either worlds, Real Life or Utopia. But that's life.