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.      

The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)

 

Hayao Miyazaki at work

THE BOY AND THE HERON (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)             B                                    Japan  (124 mi)  2023  d: Hayao Miyazaki

Aging directors are a prominent theme of the day, with recently released films by Martin Scorsese at age 81, Ridley Scott at age 86, Ken Loach at age 87, to which we can add Hayao Miyazaki at age 83.  It’s an interesting phenomenon, as these old guard directors have in many ways defined their respective generations, setting the standard for others to follow.  In the world of Japanese animation, Miyazaki literally has no peers, standing out as the last of the hand-drawn animators who painstakingly construct each shot in a cinematic universe that has otherwise been taken over by computer generated imagery, like Disney (Disney's Computer Animated Movies) and Pixar (List of Pixar films), where their shift from hand-drawn animation to CGI animated films has led to their skyrocketing box office success, where FROZEN (2013) became the first Disney animated film to gross $1 billion at the box office, while for Pixar it was TOY STORY 3 (2010), which actually features Miyazaki’s Totoro as a character.  While that’s what kids in America are drawn to today, there is really no one else in the entire universe of film like Miyazaki, a living legend and beloved visionary in a category by himself, standing at the apex in the world of animation, which never gets the same credit as live-action film, yet animation is cinema, and the depth of Miyazaki’s artwork has no peers, described by Guillermo del Toro as working on the same level of artistry as Mozart and Van Gogh. Already destined for immortality, films like this simply aren’t being made anymore, though occasionally the director seamlessly blends computer-generated imagery into his own works (water, for example).  Co-founder of Studio Ghibli in 1985, now entering the seventh decade of his career, Miyazaki is a revered, one-of-a-kind artist whose brilliant aesthetic mixes perfectly composed craftsmanship with recurring themes of humanity, introducing a striking maturity for young viewers, where simplicity is combined with the profound.  Renowned for telling stories about resourceful children navigating their way through tragedy and adversity, merging the fable-like inspiration with characters placed in realistic and historically well-defined contexts, Miyazaki leaves a lasting legacy for future generations, yet because of the exacting standards he sets for himself and his studio staff, Studio Ghibli has been unable to find a worthy successor.  Making his first film since The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014), a fictionalized homage to aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Zero fighter plane, the Japanese title of this new film references the 1937 novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino, initially published as a series for young people, becoming a defining coming-of-age book of the postwar generation emphasizing spiritual growth, coming at a time when society rewarded boastfulness, unlimited confidence, and self-promotion over integrity, kindness, and simplicity, turning into a morality tale that suggests viewing oneself at the center of the world is a mistake, encouraging young adults to think about what lies beyond themselves as they strike out on their own.  The book was given to a young Miyazaki by his mother, having a profound influence on his life, mixing elements of his own autobiography into the dreamlike story, which is not an adaptation of the book, instead turning this into a fantasy adventure that draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, yet also feels like a child’s version of Homer’s The Odyssey, with a young child entering a magical world fraught with a series of inherent dangers, yet also filled with unparalleled beauty and seemingly unfathomable mysteries before returning safely home to his family.  

Set in 1943, the penultimate year of the Pacific War, as the 12-year old protagonist, Mahito Maki, is modeled after Miyazaki’s childhood, losing his mother Hisako who is killed in a hospital fire during the hectic opening moments as air-raid sirens pierce the night in the firebombing of Tokyo, where people appear as ghostly phantoms, a blur of fear and fire compounding a feeling of helpless chaos as Mahito frantically races through a panicked crowd to try and reach her.  A year later Mahito’s father Shoichi remarries his wife’s younger sister Natsuko, and similar to Miyazaki's father, owns an air munitions factory that manufactures fighter plane components for the Japanese Imperial Army, with the family evacuating from the city in order to avoid the relentless American bombing campaign, moving to his bride’s more peaceful countryside estate, where they live with several old maids.  Suffering from inconsolable grief afterwards, the transition is particularly hard on Mahito, finding it difficult to accept his stepmother, where an incident of bullying at his school reveals a rigid class system, where most of his classmates come from unassuming farming families who resent the upper class city kid, which leads Mahito to injure himself to avoid having to return, and during his convalescence he discovers Yoshino’s book with an inscription from his mother, who never got a chance to give it to him.  Encountering a gray heron that seems to be taunting him, it lures him down a rabbit hole at an overgrown, abandoned tower that seems steeped with mystery, supposedly built by a man who amusingly “read too many books and went insane.”  Warned not to approach, as it’s dangerously dilapidated, with no upkeep whatsoever, his curiosity gets the best of him, as the heron claims his mother is still alive and only entering the tower can save her.  Hesitant at first, refusing to believe what he hears, suspecting it’s a trap, Natsuko, who is pregnant, inexplicably disappears into the tower one day, so he enters with one of the old maids to save her, but they quickly find themselves caught in an alternate universe where the heron can actually speak, discovering he is actually a small man inhabiting the heron’s body, who somewhat reluctantly ends up serving as his guide throughout this strange netherworld that seems to abide by its own rules, at times feeling more like a nightmare.  Grappling with inner conflicts and insecurities, Miyazaki emphasizes the transformative power of overcoming personal challenges, drawing a distinction between the film and Yoshino’s novel, yet both share an existential theme of finding yourself at a moral crossroads, forced to make decisions as you mature, learning certain things in life which can only be understood through experience, essentially revealing how individuals navigate and come to terms with a world characterized by strife and loss, conveying resilience in the face of conflict and grief, offering viewers a choice between emulating the chaos of Japan’s warring past or forging a different path, with an underlying theme of spiritual growth, rebirth, and personal transformation.  For some viewers the life cycles may bear similarities to Kim Ki-duk’s SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…AND SPRING (2003), with its Buddhist themes of reincarnation, but the film’s center of gravity is more driven by humanist themes.

Nearly all of Miyazaki’s films confront mortality in some form or another, a suffering at the disappearance of loved ones, yet this may be his grimmest effort, a film laden with death and darkness, a metaphor for the war years, where it’s impossible to understand what happens in the aftermath of such great loss, where only Japan has endured the mass annihilation and radioactive aftereffects from the atomic bomb.  Mahito struggles to adjust to his new life, as he’s just a grieving boy who’s trying to process the inexplicable cruelty of life, leaving him angry and prone to acts of violence, as he’s someone who wants to retreat from reality, sadly wanting nothing more to do with it.  But the gray heron won’t let him do that as it continues to pester him, luring him into a fantasy realm filled with ghosts of the past, where death is a more prominent theme, like Charon’s voyage in the mythological underworld of the dead, featuring glimpses of starry skies, ghost ships, treacherous seas that no longer produce fish, ravenous pelicans, an army of human-sized, man-eating parakeets, and powerful wizards.  Much of this doesn’t make sense, feeling more abstract and funereal, finding themselves on the precipice of the apocalypse, often feeling flawed and unfair, yet he has to figure it out with the help from friends he meets along the way, including Kiriko, a swashbuckling sailor who is a younger version of an old maid at the estate, Himi, a young fire spirit who is Mahito’s biological mother as a child, while Natsuko is her younger sister who has hidden away somewhere to give birth, the Warawara, or bubble spirits that surface to be born in Mahito’s world, and Natsuko’s great-uncle, who rules over the world as a wily old wizard with great powers.  While this may not be as transcendent or aesthetically pleasing as some of the best Miyazaki films, featuring a more tormented and problematic character than in the past, the tone appears harsher, more gloomy and melancholy, especially the blood-stained, self-inflicted injury, which is a gruesome sight, yet the probing gravity of such weighty material is nothing less than inspired, as one can feel overwhelmed by the sheer range of artistic ideas on display, beautifully complimented by a moving score from Miyazaki’s longtime musical composer, Joe Hisaishi, The Boy and The Heron Piano OST | New Ghibli Film Soundtrack YouTube (19:15), adding luscious textures and a melodic connection to what we’re witnessing, all part of the beauty of the imagination.  This also feels like A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, as the autobiographical and deeply personal nature of the film seems to relate to the development of a young artistic mind, where the apocalyptic nature of the subject matter gives way to the power of making art, which is at the core of an artist’s existence, yet art and imagination are not substitutes for reality, but tools to learn how to live, and how to deal with death, becoming an emotional journey about letting go of despair and coming to grips with personal tragedy.  Like Hamlet’s perplexing question on the meaning of life, Miyazaki searches for answers in Yoshino’s novel, as Mahito discovers introspection and learns to overcome his personal resentments and embrace hope and optimism, ultimately finding healing and acceptance with his new family.  Like so many other Miyazaki films, sensing the needs of others seems to awaken the very soul of the young protagonist, where learning to make sense of a confusing world is a hurdle we all must face growing up.  Loss and grief are a part of everyone’s life, yet that is no excuse to pull away and avoid contact with the ones who care about you, as being connected to other people and the world around you may at times seem daunting, but it’s an essential part of living.