A Big Bold Beautiful Journey Is Like Dickens, Says Colin Farrell

When a film comes along with a title like A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, it promises a certain level of emotional adventure. The latest film from Kogonada, director of After Yang and a handful of episodes of The Acolyte, intends to deliver on that promise, sending Colin Farrell’s David and Margot Robbie’s Sarah – two lonely drifters, whose lives collide at a wedding – off on… well, you can finish the rest. The nature of that journey is a cosmic, spiritual odyssey, walking together through literal doors into chapters of their pasts

“It’s a little Dickens,” Farrell tells Empire of the narrative construct – a whimsical but potent method to deliver huge emotional payoffs. As David and Sarah discover, the kind of journey they go on is exactly the one they need. “He’s just living in a certain degree of apathy,” Farrell says of his character. “He’s moving through life in something of a midlife haze.” So too, Robbie says, is Sarah. “She’s also reached a point where she’s recognised that she is falling into similar cycles, and wants to get out of it, but can’t see a way out.”

The course of making the film had plenty to teach its actors about their own journeys. As Robbie explains, this role is closer to the real her than, say, Harley Quinn or Babylon’s Nellie LaRoy. “I saw a lot of things in Sarah, that I could see in myself — not necessarily good things,” she says, “and so maybe it was a little more exposing to play a character like Sarah.” Get ready for a soulful odyssey.

Read Empire’s full A Big Bold Beautiful Journey story – speaking to Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell and Kogonada – in the Avatar: Fire And Ash issue, on sale Thursday 31 July. Order a copy online here. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey comes to UK cinemas from 19 September.