Bliss (1985) on Netflix
NR19851h 52mComedyDramaRomance
After a heart attack, Harry Joy believes he is trapped in a hellish version of his world. His wife is unfaithful, his daughter trades sex for drugs, and his newest client pollutes.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.7/101,531 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
After a massive heart attack, advertising executive Harry Joy believes his world has become a hellish version of the one he knew, or that he is finally seeing it as it truly is. He discovers his wife has been unfaithful, his daughter trades sex with her brother for drugs, and his newest client is a polluter whose products cause cancer. Trying to live morally, Harry abandons his affluent lifestyle, upsetting those around him.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bliss (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Four hundred of the 2,000-strong audience walked out of the first screening of Bliss at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.
SPOILER
Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification rated Bliss Restricted 18+ over the incest scene between Harry's children, and no distributor would handle it; producer Anthony Buckley released it himself, the rating was overturned on appeal, and the film opened at the State Theatrette in Sydney, a 130-seat former newsreel theatrette.- A sequence in which Harry smokes marijuana with a terminally ill waiter, has his car crushed by an elephant and is arrested was cut after the Cannes premiere but restored for the 1990s re-issue; Barry Otto's monologue in it was captured in a single unedited take.
- After the mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival, director Ray Lawrence reduced the film's running time from 135 minutes to 110 minutes.
- Despite the film's eventual success, Ray Lawrence did not direct another feature until Lantana in 2001, earning his living in the meantime directing television commercials.
