Johnson Thomas
Film: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lucy Thomas, Billy Magnussen
Director: Kogonada
Rating: * *
Runtime: 109 min.
“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is about how memory of past issues, grief, and loss guide us to shape our future. The film is meant as a soul trip leading to romance. But writer Seth Reiss’ fanciful expectations fail to find a match in Kogonada’s helming. It’s an interesting experiment even though it fails to fulfill engineered expectations.
The concept has some merit. Imagine two commitment phobic singles meeting at a wedding and going on a weird GPS engineered road trip that helps them come to terms with their personal demons? That’s exactly what happens here.
David ( Colin Farrell), is forced to rent a vehicle to get to his friend’s wedding, from two chatty agents (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) working in an agency that has two identical cars with strange GPS. David drives away in one of the cars… and Sarah (Margot Robbie) coincidentally takes the second. They are both going to the same wedding.
Sarah and David meet at the venue called “La Strada” and carry on a minor flirtation while discussing who would hurt the other one first in case of a romantic involvement. Next we know Sarah’s car has broken down and she gets a lift in David’s car. The vehicle’s bizarre GPS with a sensual voice helps them come to terms with their fears and foibles while serving as a matchmaker of sorts between the solo travelers.
The GPS directs them through doors (indicating unresolved issues) en route, providing Sarah and David opportunity to come to terms with defining moments of their past. Premature births, parental abandonment, missed connections, young heartbreaks, and other issues that have led them to becoming commitment phobic flit through. Sarah and David thus get a chance to smooth out their lives and become unafraid to commit to new relationships.
David and Sarah tell each other about themselves -their past and present, foibles et al, but it’s not interesting at all. Their issues feel minor so the audience begins to feel cheated. The magical intervention feels totally unnecessary.
This movie is about falling in love and has “Let My Love Open the Door” on the soundtrack. It’s too in your face so the effect is lost. Everything we see feels distant and lacking in emotion. The plotting feels entirely implausible and artificial because at no point in the film do Sarah and David question their current circumstances.
The script is fanciful, the direction feels mediocre, and the editing rather inconsistent. What should have been a magical, mysterious, mystical experience becomes a self-conscious, idiosyncratic, boring fantasy that fails to touch you in any way.
Johnsont307@gmail.com
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