A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

 

Director Kogonada

Kogonada with Colin Ferrell

Kogonada and Ferrell with Margot Robbie

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY                 B+                                                      Ireland  USA  (108 mi)  2025  d: Kogonada

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
And I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

Bright Eyes, First Day of My Life, 2005, Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06)

The most hilariously playful of the essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada films, which would include the ravishingly beautiful naturalism of 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus and the sci-fi world of artificial intelligence in After Yang (2021), where the tagline of this film is:  What if you could open a doorway and walk through it to re-live a defining moment from your past?  While the release has been postponed several times, the first film Kogonada neither wrote nor edited, it has taken an avalanche of negative criticism, with some suggesting it’s among the worst films of the year, even described as a bomb, yet this is nothing as they describe, instead it’s actually a weirdly fascinating, fun experience, clever and insightful, absurdist in its own way, where it takes us down a rabbit hole, much like Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974), while it also recalls the romantic time traveling escapades of Bertrand Bonello’s 2024 Top Ten List #9 The Beast (La Bête), Charlie Kaufman’s I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), or Robert Schwentke’s The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), while also reminiscent of the quirky romantic journey of Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer (2009), a throwback to the whimsical comedy of Zach Braff’s GARDEN STATE (2004), or even the disoriented editing structure of Charlie Kaufmann and Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004).  In other words, despite what disparaging critics have suggested, this is not a waste of time, but a bonanza of riches, a romantic fantasy filled with moments of joy, but also major disappointments, as it excruciatingly examines the flawed lives of two people who are single, filled with regrets, missed opportunities, and the trauma of bad relationships, which is part of the baggage we all carry and what makes us who we are, magically making them come together through a kind of ingeniously clever, futuristic matchmaking service, where there’s a humanizing beauty to be had in their shared moments together.  Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada’s birth name is Park Joong Eun, where his professional name was derived from renowned Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu’s longtime screenwriter Kogo Noda, and what we know is that he’s developed a reputation for the unconventional.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the film’s musical score is written by Joe Hisaishi, who is best known for his collaborations with Studio Ghibli Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, the maker of such enchanting films like MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), SPIRITED AWAY (2001), HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), and more recently The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014) and The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), where this marks the celebrated composer's first score outside of Japan, adding a touch of magic to the experience.  There’s nothing quite like this in any of the year’s movie releases, where the uniqueness of the subject matter, beautifully realized by screenwriter Seth Reiss, a former head writer for the irreverent, satirical publication The Onion and on the staff of Late Night with Seth Meyers, becomes a cause for celebration.  While deeply felt and understated, this may not be as intellectually challenging as the filmmaker’s earlier work, but it is lighter and infinitely more entertaining, revealing a side we haven’t really seen before, literally swooning with romanticism, where these big name Hollywood actors are an absolute delight in something less mainstream and more offbeat, and while the protagonist’s problems aren’t exactly so earthshaking that it requires divine intervention, like George Bailey in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), the solution does appear to be driven by the transformative power of love. 

Carrying over the married couple actors from his previous film, including the artistically stunning, visually dazzling cinematography by Benjamin Loeb, employing a vivid color palette, while adding a few new surprises, the unusually versatile Colin Ferrell stars as David, a single man with a perpetually lonely soul, yet he’s completely relatable as someone we might have known, smart, imaginative, yet not exactly socially engaging, typically keeping to himself, where he doesn’t easily make connections.  When his car is booted for parking issues, in desperation he turns to a rental car agency specializing in emergencies since 1994, whose homemade flyer advertisement is seen posted on a wall directly in front of his car, including a phone number and a mysterious broken heart.  Arriving in this immense warehouse that is completely dark except for an illuminated card table on the far side, like a football field away, where two people sit under a giant sign that says The Rental Car Agency – none other than Kevin Kline (you have to do a double take to realize that’s him) and a German-accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge who relishes the use of the word “fuck,” whose surreal personalities are oddly eccentric, characters you might find in a Monty Python movie, not at all what he expects, as it plays out like an audition, where they already have a professional headshot photo of him, a picture David has never seen before, informing him “Sometimes we have to perform to get to the truth,” so none of this makes sense.  He’s also a bit surprised that the only cars offered are two identical 1994 Saturn SL’s, which are no longer in operation, yet there they are, and while he’s flummoxed by the bizarre way the car agent’s communicate, almost like robotic AI versions of themselves, insisting there’s only one right answer to all his inquiries, nonetheless he’s persuaded to purchase the accompanying GPS, which the car didn’t originally have in the pre-internet era, with no outlets for a phone, complete with an animated screen.  As it turns out, that GPS is a major character in the film, seemingly omniscient and all-knowing, with a cryptic voice offering advice that goes well beyond navigational directions, voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith, with David seen in the car on the road happily belting out one of the songs from the musical A Chorus Line while he drives to a wedding, A Chorus Line (1985) - One Scene (8/8) | Movieclips YouTube (4:09), not the norm, for sure, yet it exudes pizzazz from the hidden regions of his less than dynamic personality.  Upon arrival at the wedding in the pouring rain, taking place in a hotel called La Strada (after the Fellini film), all the guests are handed Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) umbrellas for an outdoor service (just a few of the many cinematic cues referenced), where David looks across the aisle to see a woman looking back at him, Margot Robbie as Sarah, where the pair briefly engages in conversation afterwards.  He’s more reserved and shy, quietly haunted by regrets and unresolved relationships, while she’s more of a free spirit, where her cheerful exterior hides the vulnerability and deep turmoil within, as both are unhappily single, where neither is the person they would like to be, but they are so emotionally guarded that they’d rather ignore any obvious attraction to avoid the risk of getting hurt, so the encounter ends awkwardly, seemingly built on self-deprecating declarations, but nothing becomes of it before going their separate ways.  Instead, on the road afterwards, the GPS informs him of an upcoming spot to stop for a fast food burger.  Incredulously, Sarah is there as well, coming over to share a table with David, where they realize each is driving the exact same vintage Saturn, quickly assessing that this is more than mere coincidence.  Confessing a few personal secrets about themselves, their fears, their insecurities, and their fear of commitment, discovering both have been disappointed in relationships, they decide to continue the journey together, but only after Sarah’s car fails to start, so they really have no other choice, turning into a road trip that is partly a journey down memory lane and partly a spiritual awakening.   

Literally thrown in each other’s laps, it all seems designed by a higher power, embarking on a fantastical, magical mystery tour together, where the GPS leads them to a series of mysterious doors in the middle of nowhere as open portals to another dimension that allows them to revisit key moments of their past, like a lighthouse in Canada that may or may not have led to a personal epiphany for David, or an art museum that Sarah used to visit with her equally free spirited mother, developing a trusting relationship with the guard who let them in after hours when the museum is completely dark, so these are memorable places, holding a very special significance in their lives, perhaps the source of their negative views of themselves.  They connect on an existential level, both very self-aware, digging into who they are and how they got to be that way, happier alone than in the company of others, yet that is equally frustrating, challenged by their own unique limitations, as a dark cloud seems to hover over each of them, stymied by an inability to connect with others, yet visiting these doors is a bit like dating, as the accumulation of knowledge and the discovery of new possibilities is essential.  When another door leads to David’s high school, seeing him as a teenager while viewers see him as an adult, the film explodes into a full-blown musical, as David has the role of J. Pierrepont Finch in the Pulitzer prize-winning musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, suddenly finding himself performing onstage just after the girl of his dreams rejects him, breaking out into a song and dance, with Sarah, who is a musical junkie, howling with delight in the audience, A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – Exclusive 6 Minute Scene YouTube (6:24).  It all feels cathartic, like this has a chance to change their future in some mysterious way, but neither one seems able to find that key, still locked in the past with no way out, where there’s a beautiful balance between cynicism and hope, as each one gets stuck in their own personal trauma, trying to reach out, but get blocked by their preconceptions, which has a way of bulldozing their hopes and dreams.  The filmmaker has a blast just visualizing this succession of doors, like one of their destinations where Sarah and David climb a hill that incredulously offers them a view of Earth from space.  With each passing door comes new revelations about a crucial event in each other’s lives that provides greater understanding into their character.  There’s an Alice in Wonderland innocence and naïveté about this, as these kinds of literary efforts are usually young people or teenagers passing through a phase into adulthood, but these are adults reverting back to their childhoods, seemingly rewiring the circuitry, but neither one is brave enough to reach out to the other, as they seem to need an extra boost to appreciate their own lives.  Perhaps the most therapeutic sequences are surreal and intoxicating moments where David is transported back to a hospital in Ireland on the day he was born where he’s anonymously able to encourage his own reticent father as a younger man (Hamish Linklater), while Sarah visits her ailing mother (Lily Rabe, daughter of actress Jill Clayburgh - - cool how the parents are partners in real life) in the hospital on the day she dies of cancer, a woman who sacrificed everything to give her daughter a good life, finally sharing that poignant moment together that they were never able to actually experience, offering some kind of corrective.  There’s a weirdly amusing, phantasmagorical nature to the entire experience, beautifully rendered, with just a touch of the right serious note, but as soon as we hear the sounds of Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06), we know we’re immersed in a whimsical theatrical journey brimming with optimism, given that distinct indie film vibe.   Kogonada is known for his distinctive style and philosophical themes, as the film explores the possibility of restoring belief in love and the potential to overcome cynicism as one gets older, overcoming that creeping doubt that lingers, where there’s a wonderful turn in one of the more dramatic scenes with Mitski’s rendition of Peter Townsend’s seminal song, Let My Love Open the Door | A Big Bold Beautiful Journey ... YouTube (2:43), which seems to be the missing key of the entire film, allowing them to begin anew, their lives forever altered, offering just a hint of hope that despite all obstacles, there is a pathway to a brighter future.  If you stay until the end of the closing credits, which features a breakthrough dance sequence, the last sound we hear are feet approaching a door that closes shut, suggesting the journey is now complete.  While it may not be what some people have come to expect, it does exude charm, feeling like the perfect antidote for these politically chaotic and overly traumatic times.      

After Yang

Writer/director/editor Kogonada

AFTER YANG          B                                                                                                                USA  (96 mi)  2021  ‘Scope  d: Kogonada

I don’t mind if there isn’t anything in the end.             —Yang (Justin H. Min)

A somewhat confusing yet immaculately produced new work by Korean-American film essayist turned director Kogonada, which is about as far removed as possible from the lyrical naturalism of 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus, failing miserably at the box office, released at the height of the Covid pandemic when movie theaters were largely empty.  Based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story, Saying Goodbye to Yang, a collection of science fiction stories from his 2016 book Children of the New World, what jumpstarted the idea is something we’ve all been victim of at some point in time, that deafening moment when our computer died, taking with it years of contacts and creative output, instantly cut off from the outside world, when all suddenly goes silent.  It’s a rare feeling, as if left on an island, when life strangely appears quite different.  You might even say it feels like a death in the family.  Written about the same time that people were getting iPhones, expressing how much they loved them, becoming invested and attached to something they don’t really understand, where one gets the sense that people were all starting to forge this very deep emotional connection with technology.  Anyone who grew up watching people stare for hours at TV screens, constantly warned of the dangers this poses for children, can identify with the obsessional nature of people glued to this smaller screen that anyone can carry around in their pocket, with so many kids unable to part with their phones in school, where there is a looming question about our overreliance on technology.  Originally screening at Un Certain Regard in the Covid-delayed Cannes Festival in 2021, before screening again six months later at Sundance in January 2022, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan science award, it feels like a pandemic film, written and edited by Kogonada, shot in ‘Scope by Benjamin Loeb, appearing overly dark and somber, exploring a virtual reality existence, yet the dialogue is soft and meditative, exuding gentleness and a quiet introspection, with a seemingly joyless yet probing message of sadness that uses artificial intelligence to question human existence.  Posing big existential questions, many that were asked fifty years ago by the sci-fi android classic written by Philip K. Dick in 1968, (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), or before that in the 1942 classic I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov that forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence (A.I.), the characters seem to drift through this film in a sluggish melancholy, where the overall sense of detachment can feel overly oppressive, reminiscent of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, like The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), which also featured Colin Farrell.  However there’s also a mesmerizing sense of wonderment in the spectacular use of location, the Eichler House on the outskirts of New York City (East Coast Eichler Home by Jones and Emmons), with its glass windows, where the lavish designer home set decoration by Joanne Ling and production design by Alexandra Schaller are nothing less than stunning, where the East Asian influence is evident, exuding a Zen tranquility.  It’s a strange tale taking place somewhere between 20 to 30 years in the future, with minimal clues provided, following a young mixed race, middle-class couple whose robotic “technosapian” member Yang (Justin H. Min) has suddenly gone dead, forcing the family to come to terms with an irreparable malfunction, becoming an elegiac study of loss and alienation, evolving into a meditative and melancholic inquiry into what it means to be human, looking inward, exploring memories that make life worth living, while at the same time becoming an allegory for the Asian-American experience. 

Existing somewhere in the same android universe as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), and Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (2017), where artificial life forms intersect with human existence, the most unique twist, however, may come from the film’s resemblance to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (Wandafuru raifu) (1998), where memories can be turned on and off by command through a visualization of cyberspace, opening up doors to a virtual reality universe.  A photography sequence leads into an enthralling, high-energy dance number playing through the opening credits that offers a glimpse of the cast, After Yang (2021) title sequence YouTube (3:37), as Kyra (black actress Jodie Turner-Smith) and Jake (Colin Farrell) are two working parents using a “cultural techno,” or refurbished android Yang to help familiarize their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) with her native Chinese culture, using him in the role of big brother, babysitter, and storehouse of cultural knowledge all in one, with hopes of connecting Mika with her heritage by providing “Chinese fun facts.”  But Yang suddenly stops working, leaving Mika emotionally devastated, as she’s actually much closer to Yang than her more distant parents.  Largely told through Jake, who is worn down and emotionally detached, seemingly going through the motions, avoiding his sense of paternal responsibility, allowing Yang to intervene in his behalf, but when Yang shuts down, he mostly seems inconvenienced, viewing this as just another problem he has to deal with, already feeling overburdened, yet when we see him working in his artisanal tea shop, there are no customers, as he’s losing business rapidly over a failure to convert to the more popular “tea crystals,” deluding himself into believing he’s always busy.  Not only does he have to figure out how to turn Yang back on, but also explain to his daughter why he is missing.  While he’s not that emotionally invested with Yang, what really stresses him out is how to carry out his new responsibilities, something he’s completely unfamiliar with, while the more scientifically rational Kyra has a sensible view, thinking they’ve been overly reliant upon Yang, hoping this may bring them closer together as a family.  No longer under warranty, repair is an expensive proposition, as the original business that sold Yang is gone, with companies instead offering to recycle him, like an older-model smartphone, discovering a Kafkaesque labyrinth of corporate disinterest where everything is disposable, so Jake turns to an underground black market repairman named Russ (Ritchie Coster), an eccentric fringe character who illegally breaks into Yang’s core, reporting he can’t be fixed, while also discovering what may be a malicious surveillance device, adding a conspiracy aspect of Big Brother paranoia, with weird elements of racism creeping in.  Out of a sense of desperation, Jake takes Yang to the Museum of Technology, where Cleo (Sarita Choudhury), the museum curator and A.I. historian, explains that what he discovered is not a surveillance mechanism, but Yang’s database of recorded memories, opening up a flood of new information that Jake accesses through virtual reality glasses, plunging into the unexplored realms of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt)  (1991), which accentuates the technological visualization of dreams, where brainwaves are sculpted into a new kind of cinematic awareness, plunging into the depths of the subconsciousness, creating a kaleidoscope of intersecting forms and shapes and colors.  As Kogonada carefully weaves between the present and the past, memories in this film evoke a time-traveling aura moving back and forth in time, changing with each human host, who recalibrates them in their own unique way. 

By shifting the focus onto Yang’s memories, the film accentuates a different journey, expressed through a first person perspective, where the formalized cyberspace aesthetic is given a breathtaking presentation, largely attributed to visual effects artist Raoul Marx who works with Antibody, Yang's Memories Scene from AFTER YANG YouTube (5:19).  The imagery, combined with the memories Yang chose to keep, make these sequences more touching, unlocking certain mysteries about his past that were unknown to his family, taking us into unexpected places, like where Yang came from, which has a way of humanizing him.  Jake discovers Yang’s romantic interest with an enigmatic young woman at the center of his memories named Ada (Hayley Lu Richardson, who literally breathes life into this film), something no one even knew was even possible, adding another layer of human incomprehension, which only deepens the mystery.  Tracking her down from Yang’s memories, Jake tries to fathom who he really was, wondering whether he felt slighted by his limitations, with Ada (a human clone), already upset at his loss, adding bluntly, “That’s such a human thing to ask.  We always assume that other beings would want to be human.  What’s so great about being human?”  Yang couldn’t know what it is to be human, but he developed a meaningful sense of connection, to moments, people, places and things, which incites Jake’s philosophical search for meaning, confronting his own mortality, ultimately lifting him out of the dreariness of his own life.  At one point Mika, who has a habit of getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, surprises Jake watching Yang’s memories, and asks, “Are you watching a film?”  When he replies that he is, not only is Jake having a personal and epiphanic experience, but by watching the film, so are we.  There’s a discussion between Yang and Jake about why he has such a particular fascination with tea, seen through the eyes of Yang, which captures an opening into a completely different world, expressed through spoken dialogue repeating itself, but with a different delivery, offering a slightly different perspective.  One is how Jake remembers it, but the other is Yang’s objective reality, taking a single memory but elevating it into something more dramatically impactful.  As he delves deeper into Yang’s memories, where the compositions are just stunning, he discovers an entire life lived with a previous owner, and yet another one before that when he first met the original Ada, who has gone through her own transformations, as that first owner had children, grandchildren, and eventually died of old age, After Yang (2022) - Original Ada Memory - YouTube (3:27).  These are memories that Yang refused to let go of, having a significant meaning for him that was completely undetected by either owner, with suggestions that artificial intelligence may have a consciousness.  The unraveling of these memories plays out like Tarkovsky’s MIRROR (1975), where even the verdant setting along a fence near a wood looks exactly the same, as you see the prior family playfully running along a pathway, followed by the exact same setting with the people missing, where the emptiness is starkly moving, tapping into the same territory as Kieślowski’s THREE COLORS: BLUE (1993), becoming an enduring portrait of loneliness and grief.  He’s able to see not only Yang’s life through his eyes, but also his own life through Yang’s eyes, giving him more of an appreciation for his own family.  Kyra has her own experiences with Yang, After Yang - What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly (Lao Tzu) YouTube (4:21), while this also extends to Mika, who is bullied in school for not having “real” parents, so in a “grafting scene,” Yang shows her a botanical technique of combining different roots and branches to create a new plant, as Yang attempts to explain how an extended family has their own interconnectedness, much like trees and plants in nature, which helps her come to terms with being adopted.  When she responds that some limbs are held together by tape, this is a reference to Yang’s own unnatural artificiality, yet he has a unique ability to bring this family closer together.  Pondering his own place in America’s racial landscape, Kogonada brilliantly captures this diasporic condition in Yang’s duality as a Chinese A.I. in a multiracial family.  There is a piano-centered score by Japanese composer Aska Matsumiya (ASKA), supported by the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto, while also re-introducing a song from Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (2001), which happens to be Yang and Mika’s favorite song, an endearing part of Japanese pop culture, covered by biracial Japanese-American musician Mitski, Mitski - Glide (cover) (Official Audio) - YouTube (3:41), with the song echoing their hidden interiority, with Mika speaking an untranslated Mandarin saying her final goodbye in Yang’s empty room, a nod to that final goodbye sequence in Edward Yang’s Yi Yi: A One and a Two... (2000).