A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Starring Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie
M
3.75/5
The third film from Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is an episodic, clunky but touching fantasy romance about two strangers who go on a time-jumping adventure after meeting at a wedding.
Despite the solid performances and gorgeous art direction, including the nifty costuming choice of colour-coding Sarah (Margot Robbie) and David (Colin Farrell) as red and blue (respectively), ABBBJ gets off to a rough start.
With the low emotional wavelength, the blunt, slightly odd dialogue and the artificial framing-device of GPSes with the face of HAL-9000 guiding David and Sarah to doors in space-time (imposed through an annoying comedy bit with Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge), ABBBJ’s first half sits in a tonal Uncanny Valley.
Too twee as drama but too grounded as surrealism, ABBBJ pushes you away rather than drawing you in, and often feels like a lavish, low-stakes museum tour.
The film finds its stride in the second half with some wonderful vignettes, more meaty dialogue, plenty more stunning visuals and a moving examination of David as a man who tires of true love once he achieves it and Sarah as a woman afraid of being too happy.
Much like the street dance scene in The Life of Chuck and the time-bending rave in Sinners, ABBBJ’s highlight is a funny, purposefully awkward sequence of David reliving his high-school musical, as his future knowledge threatens to sink the show.
There are also poignant complementary scenes of Sarah and David confronting their pasts, where the drama (mostly) rises out of the Valley and the sensitive
dialogue and Farrell and Robbie’s acting really shine.
Consistently pretty, hard to engage with for the first half but deeply moving for the second, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
