Movies

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, starring Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, directed by Kogonada
Trailer: Columbia Pictures

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Directed by Kogonada
Rated R
Opened 19 September 2025
#ABigBoldBeautifulJourney

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey moves art house style into the mainstream.

Geofencing Journey

Spend a couple hours with Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell and walk away with some profound thoughts. But those thoughts multiply as the movie makes its own journey through the mind afterward.

This journey starts with quite a bit of zing. It’s a journey guided by serendipity and the notion that even fate requires one to be "open" to new possibilities. Things just happen. Unexpected things. Improbable things. Truly, madly, deeply improbable things.

For poor David, the unexpected and the journey begin close to home. His car conks out en route to a wedding. But, as fate would have it, a conspicuous sheet of paper is taped to a nearby brick wall. The paper promotes a rental car agency that’s been specializing in emergencies since 1994.

This is no ordinary agency. Simply getting in is no small feat. Doors are tricky and this agency’s door has to be opened at precisely ½ beat after the buzzer sounds. Once inside, meet a very funny agent, who’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge throwing out some sort of German accent. She’s assisted by an extremely amiable, gray-haired Kevin Kline as the techie mechanic.

This all has a scent of Terry Gilliam’s sensibilities about it. Rent a car. You have the choice of one of two 1994 Saturns. (Saturns stopped production in 2009.)

And, for the love of all that’s holy, take the GPS option. After all, you never know when your phone’s going to crap out.

But this is no ordinary GPS. Figuratively speaking, it’s a GPS locked in on locating your heart. And it’s completely, totally upfront about the distance to be traveled. To wit, alerting David of the impending "237 long, arduous miles."

Meet Cute, Travel Cuter

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is packed with visual flair, loads of wonderfully composed images illuminated with vibrant color. And it’s all filled with symbolism. Lots and lots of symbolism.

It’s a colorful world reminiscent of Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The supreme serendipity recalls Field of Dreams as Ray Kinsella follows his heart. Thankfully, joyously, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey serves as an antidote to the moribund, romance-drained Materialists (which inexplicably struck a nerve with some and made a king’s ransom at the box office). And, strangely enough, it’s a cousin to two new horror flicks which also delve heavily into the figurative, The Long Walk and Him. The Long Walk and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey share another aspect: both are loaded with a lot of dialogue; strategically structured, character-building dialogue.

Let’s start with the characters and their names.

David Longley (Farrell) has longings. As a younger man, he dreamed of getting married and having three sons. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Sarah Myers (Robbie) is focused on herself, so let’s substitute "Myers" for "My" for her figurative alliteration.

The two meet about as cute as two can meet. Both rented one of the two Saturns. Both took the GPS option. And they meet at that wedding.

When David rented his car, he had to explain to the agents, "I am not an actor."

And yet he’s advised by Phoebe’s spirited agent, "We all have to perform to get to the truth."

This is the kind of movie that can so smoothly slide those ideas into the mix and make it feel "right." Thank screenwriter Seth Reiss for that. Reiss co-wrote the well-regarded The Menu (starring Ralph Fiennes) and he’s also done a considerable amount of writing for The Onion’s TV properties.

Then there’s the director, Kogonada, who’s the creative soul of this production. Kogonada rode a wave a few years back with Columbus and, more recently, several episodes of the TV series Pachinko and The Acolyte. He’s a vital, rising director, one who has a visual identity, a signature style.

Sure, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey isn’t for everybody. (Unfortunately, it’s saddled with an "R" rating for some "F" bombs, which will only further hamper its reception.) The movie out arthouses any other arthouse movie this year, but with the benefit of having Sony Pictures’ might backing the production. For an artsy movie, its reported $45 million budget is pretty steep. But it’s all accounted for on the screen.

Timely Inn

Having met at the wedding, David and Sarah embark on their journey back home. But Sarah’s car – serendipitously – won’t start. So they travel back together. And that’s when the figurative world grows larger.

A mysterious red door sits conspicuously in a field. They check it out. Magically, as they pass through the door, they enter a Canadian lighthouse, which features in David’s earlier days.

Later, a blue door leads them into the high school where David had some very significant, formative experiences.

Another door leads to a coffee shop where both David and Sarah had uncomfortable conversations with their significant others at one point or another.

But it’s a graffiti-covered door that really unlocks the vibe of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Pass through that door and enter a dark museum. Sarah and David take in the art by flashlight and Sarah reveals some life-defining moments from her past that had this museum at its core.

What’s Your Line?

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey doesn’t have what might be considered a defining line of dialogue along the lines of the ultimate romantic classics, such as "You complete me" from Jerry Maguire or "I’m your density" from Back to the Future. It doesn’t have a "I’ll have what she’s having" kind of moment.

But it does settle on something that’s right for these two and their journey. "I think we can be content together."

That comes from Sarah. Both Sarah and David have been content with their single lives. They’re both totally comfortable living alone. They travel alone. They "be" alone.

For Sarah, she struggles with cheating and self-sabotaging her relationships. At a key sequence when Sarah and David open separate doors, hers takes her back to her childhood home and her unwaveringly supportive mother. Her bedroom’s covered with Broadway show posters, including Singing in the Rain and West Side Story. She seeks out the comfort of mashed potatoes and watching Big on the sofa.

David also revisits his childhood home. His bedroom walls are draped with posters of U2, Les Mis and Steven Spielberg’s Hook. And he’s given the opportunity to be a father, but it’s him being his own father. And his father is the one who, in the movie’s opening moments, advises his son to "Be open. Life is better when you’re open."

This is great stuff. It’s simple on the surface, perhaps easily overlooked or even misunderstood. But it’s appreciating the layers that reveals the elegant complexity. It’s about the influences in those formative years that send kids out into the world for their own journeys, which hopefully are big, bold and beautiful. It’s not just the parental influences that count; the creative influences also serve as a mighty driving force.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey finds its own pace and it’s the right pace for a movie that presents characters unraveling their own pasts so they can make a leap of faith toward an even better future.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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