Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Kogonada, ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ follows the story of David and Sarah, who cross paths with each other through what can only be called divine intervention. While they meet each other at a wedding, their journey forward already seems to have been written in the stars. However, their personal demons keep them from being with each other, and when they arrive at the end of the road, they have to confront the decision that can alter the course of their lives forever. The story takes many twists and turns, revealing some dark chapters from both of their lives, before we discover the true fate of their relationship. SPOILERS AHEAD.
David and Sarah are Held Back by Their Past Experiences in Relationships
When they meet each other for the first time, David and Sarah experience an immediate spark. He likes her, and he doesn’t shy away from letting her know as well. She likes him too, but decides not to pursue anything further and takes a step back deliberately. At the end of the day, she dances with someone else and spends the night with someone else. He, on the other hand, fends off advances from other women and spends the night lamenting that when she asked him to dance, he said he doesn’t dance. While they fail to continue building their connection, the GPS in their cars from the mysterious car rental agency does the trick.
It leads both of them to the same burger joint, where they have a chat, and then, Sarah’s car breaks down rather conveniently, and she has to continue the rest of the journey with David. The more time they spend together, moving from one memory to another, the clearer it becomes that they are meant to be together. However, they prove to be their own worst enemies. For Sarah, her experience with relationships has never been good, because she herself has sabotaged things just when they’d start to turn serious. She confesses that her problem is that she cheats on her partners. No matter how great the other person is, she always ends up cheating on them and messing up things.
This makes her feel that she will do the same with David, which will hurt him. But then, he, too, has some things to sort out. It seems that David is more about the thrill of the chase. He once came close to getting married, but broke off the engagement because he realised that all the love and happiness he had felt for his fiancée was while he was still chasing her. Once they were to marry, that chase was gone, and he went back to being the way he was, but being tied to a relationship that he knew didn’t really have his heart. Sarah thinks he is doing the same thing with her: that his love will exist only until he is chasing her. The moment things get serious, he, too, will find a way to sabotage things, and they will be stuck in the same cycle.
Sarah’s Closure With Her Mother Changes Her Mind About David
Apart from not being able to sustain a relationship for long, a central aspect of Sarah’s character is the guilt she feels for not being by her mother’s side in her final moments. She carries the grief and shame of that moment with her, and eventually realises that this might be the reason why she has not been able to form a genuine connection with someone else. By this time, she has parted ways with David and brought their big, bold, beautiful journey to an end, despite his claims of love for her. She cannot ignore the fact that they are both broken and flawed, and that they would be repeating the same cycle they have been stuck in for so long. When she drives away, the GPS asks her to continue her journey, but she says she just wants to go home.
The home that the GPS takes her to is the one she lived in with her mother when she was a child. She was twelve at the time, and her mother was still alive and relatively healthy. Sarah uses this opportunity to talk with her mother about the things she couldn’t as an adult because her mother died so young. When she talks about her bad luck in relationships and whether she will ever be a successful and happy adult, her mother tells her to first aim for contentment. That is what matters more than the idea of being perpetually happy with someone. Meanwhile, David, too, asks the GPS to take him home, and he is taken to his childhood, where he enters the house as his father. He finds himself after the school play, when he was heartbroken after Cheryl’s rejection.
David’s problem was that this rejection from his first crush made him think that he needed to continuously please and impress his partner. This created the idea of a chase in his mind, and while it made him feel good, he felt worse when the chase ended. He revisits that moment and talks to his younger self, imparting to him the wisdom to do better in his future relationships. At the end of the day, David and Sarah walk out of the door and drive back to the city. David is the first one to arrive at the car rental agency to return the car, realising that Sarah has not returned yet. He leaves, believing he might never see her again, but when she arrives at the rental agency, she doesn’t immidiately return the car. She sits in for a moment and ponders what to do next.
Her mother’s advice of finding contentment with a person makes her think about her equation with David, and she realises that that’s what she could have with him. So, she asks the GPS to take her to David’s house, where she finds him sitting on the stairs. He is surprsied to see her, but also happy. Sarah expresses her desire to be with him, no matter how it ends, and he agrees. He asks her if she is ready to go through another door, hinting that it’s time to take another big bold beautiful journey. They walk through the door together, which leads into David’s house, but in a way, is the beginning of their journey into the future, together.
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