A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, 2025, 3 ¾ stars

Taking the door less opened

Romantic Journey forges its own path

Exclusive to MeierMovies, September 18, 2025

When one door closes, another opens, so the saying goes. But what if you could, if only for a day, reopen the doors you thought were forever closed to you?

And what if instead of going through the doors alone, as you originally did, you can now take someone with you? Further, what if that person is a potential new love who has doors of her own to enter again, accompanied by you?

Those existential questions are the guiding forces behind Korean-American director Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the most visually imaginative (and comma-challenged) film of the year. With its heart-on-its-sleeve sentimentality and unpredictable tonal shifts, it’s not a journey for everyone. Yet your acceptance of the film might depend not as much on the film’s journey as on your own – where life, with its joys and sadnesses, has deposited you emotionally at this moment. And if that moment is similar to that of either David (Colin Farrell) or Sarah (Margot Robbie), the film should resonate.

After a kismet meeting at a wedding, David and Sarah randomly meet again while driving home to their residences in “the city.” (This and other unnamed locations give the film an “everywhere” feel, adding to its otherworldly vibe.) Yet they soon learn their second meeting wasn’t random at all, but part of a pre-programmed rendezvous.

That meeting was seemingly engineered by a surreal company and its odd employees (played by a quirky Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a sweet yet underused Kevin Kline) who might represent gods, the Fates or – in one of the film’s best metaphors – the real deities in Hollywood: casting directors. However you interpret those characters and their motives behind manipulating David and Sarah, you will likely appreciate the undefinable element they bring to the otherwise in-your-face romanticism of this journey of discovery.

This is Kogonada’s third film, after Columbus (one of the best little discoveries of 2017) and 2021’s After Yang (also starring Farrell and consumed with themes of memory, loss and humanity). Those films were both written by Kogonada while Journey was penned by Seth Reiss. Still, Kogonada’s askew sensibility is undeniable, aided by compelling production design by Mary Florence Brown and Katie Byron. I look forward to seeing what creative doors all these artists walk through next.

What prevents Journey from approaching greatness are the aforementioned tonal jumps from sad to crude, quirky to mawkish and profound to pedestrian. There’s also the question of chemistry between Farrell and Robbie, who, despite stellar individual performances, don’t always click, perhaps because of their 14-year age difference. Still, Farrell is easy on the eyes while Robbie is arguably the most beautiful creature currently walking the Earth – too beautiful, in fact, if that’s possible, which buoys the film’s fantastical nature.

Looking for cinematic comparisons, Sliding Doors and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind seem to fit, with shades of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But, despite its flaws, Journey is original, fusing a time-travel tone with a pure love story with a heartbreaking drama, before finally settling into a dreamy melancholy. In addition, this is one hell of a road film and a powerful ode to those who choose to travel alone but subsequently long to share the trip’s revelations with a sympatico human. (If only the film didn’t rely so much on songs, which are liberally peppered throughout.)

Mixed with the sporadic heavy-handedness are some genuinely profound insights, such as the realization by the characters that, if you’re still alone at middle age, you shouldn’t necessarily settle, but you might need to change your definition of happiness.

“Choose to be content, and enjoy the moments of happiness that come from that,” Sarah tells David.

And so goes the film itself. Though I am not overjoyed by all Kogonada’s choices, I am content. And that quiet contentment is affording me a surprising amount of movie happiness.

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For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. The film is in cinemas starting September 19.