Which is real and unreal?

Bliss (2021)

Director: Mike Cahill

This is one of the movies that one will either love or hate; get it, or it just passes by! I thought it was good. It helps the rest of the population not be affected by the complexities of a confused mind. 

Quite often than that, to the lucky ones unaffected by the hardship of modern living, it is sometimes how certain decisions should be made. And we cannot understand why the mentally ill repeatedly make wrong life decisions. They plunge continually into states of helplessness and hopelessness. 

Greg (Owen Wilson) is a staff in a call centre-like office. Even though his superior keeps calling him to the office, Greg is immersed in his own pencil drawing of his dream holiday villa. We gather that he is divorced. Even though everybody else is huffing and puffing, busy answering calls, Greg is in bliss, adding details to his drawing. 

When Greg finally meets his boss, he is shocked to find out he has been fired. Greg shoves his boss aside, and in a freak accident, the boss hits his head and dies. That is, everything became a blur. Greg finds his life going into a tailspin. He is confused. He does not know what is real, what is drug-induced, and what is hallucination. Who is that mysterious lady who keeps appearing and disappearing with yet another concoction to try? Why is the Universe keeps changing? At one moment, they are homeless and hunted like dogs in one instance and, in another, feted as great scientists.

To the uninitiated, this whole exercise is too confusing. If we scrutinise keenly, this entire imbroglio of severe mental illness could be akin to one floating around in a dream. Just like we become the leading player in our dreams and tend to do invincible outlandish feats, the sufferer is convinced that he writes the script of his role. There are no rules there; no holds barred. The trouble is that the audience and co-players do not share the same script. Hence, the clash.

Mental illness causes distortions of the mind. And the modalities to treat the sickness also bring in the same distortion to the mind, sometimes worse, bringing in disastrous outcomes. Sometimes, it makes us wonder. Is the illness worse, or is the treatment worse?

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