Word: blissfully
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ecstasy are in short supply these days. The first emotion is too righteous for the Age of Ambiguity; the second has been debased into the brand name of an upscale drug. So it is salutary for a film to examine and embrace those anachronistic, ever-so-'60s extremes. Bliss wants to pose the biggest questions -- about life, death and the twilight state in between that passes for existence -- in the weirdest way. It fulminates like a bag-lady savant on the toxic dangers of technology and moral compromise. It has big, randy dreams about its hero's search...
...Fever, by contrast, there are depths beneath the glittering surface. Harris and a gifted supporting cast manage to suggest most of them despite Director Brian Murray's heavy-handed style, which emphasizes pandemonium rather than character study. The slender plot depicts the artsy Bliss family at play in their country home. Their main amusement is the calculated tormenting of four hapless weekend visitors, each of whom winds up enmeshed by some member of the family in a less than blissful, indeed heartlessly feigned, romance...
Although Gardner filmed Forest of Bliss over a 10-week span (concealing his camera in a green garbage bag so as not to attract the curious masses), he compressed his shots into a single day's medley, sunrise to exquisite sunrise. During the moments after the opening sunrise, we feel baffled, in need of explication. When the sun rises once again, we have experienced what Gardner refers to as "it" and we begin to understand...
This weakness, however, is counterbalanced by Gardner's brilliant application of the cinema verite technique. Forest of Bliss lays bare a Benares we would see and experience had we been there. We are bombarded by sights and sounds: street noise, the silence of the river, the knelling of bells. We are tourists experiencing Gardner's "it," his ineffable sense of place and not an audience simply being led about like a dog on a leash. Forest of Bliss hangs before us nakedly exposed and uninhibited, without the protective cover of explication...
...what exactly is Gardener's "it"? The movie's subtle texture, effortlessly impelled by Gardener's deft editing, reveals that "it" is the sense of death that pervades daily life. Like cinema verite, "it" is based on an oxymoron. Forest of Bliss actually reasserts life by concentrating on the ceremony of dying. Vitality and color, charisma and charm, abound in the visages of the living inhabitants, most notably the fire seller, whose joie de vivre consumes the screen. And this juxtaposition of life with death necessitates audience observation, not verbal explanation...