Kogonada seems like a true artist whose work can be neatly divided between the work he wrote and the work he was hired to direct. You do not need to guess which avenue has made for interesting art. I look forward to following their career in the years to come.
3. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey [2025]
“I prefer to feel nervous with you than to feel nothing alone.”
This was Kogonada’s first for-hire directorial job – and it instantly revealed him to be ill-suited for such a task. There are some nice moments in this film that hit me, but it is overall a clumsy and too-broad metaphor of a story try to capture the idea that being in a relationship means moving forward through life while processing the past together. It is FINE, but I cannot imagine being terribly impressed by this film if you are older than sixteen years old. And even, it might not move you meaningfully.
2. After Yang [2021]
“There’s no something without nothing.”
Kogonada’s second film feels like an appropriate follow-up to his debut while also being a mild step backward overall. It works though because Kogonada has a great understanding of what it feels like to be alive and to delve into it. Here, he is exploring the idea of how people can be taking up a lot of space in our lives and then disappear.
How do we respond when people disappear? Why are we so tempted to hang on to the memories? Why can we not be at peace with things coming to an end? Simultaneously, it’s very difficult to comprehend that even our loved ones live whole lives outside of us that we have no concept of whatsoever.
All of this fits in well with Kogonada’s way of moving the camera (or not moving as the case may be). People will move out of the shot but Kogonada keeps the camera still. People come in and out of the shot freely. There is a permanence to life but not for individuals.
If this writeup seems scattered-brained, that is appropriate. Because this film is a little all over the place itself. It is a movie with many questions about life. Maybe too many questions.
1. Columbus [2017]
Kogonada’s rather stunning debut film captures some brutal yet loving truths about being alive. Fundamentally, Columbus is about the universal human feeling about being lost. It is remarkable that no matter what stage of life you may be in, there is a distinct probability that you will have little sense of self, you will deeply question what you do for work, and that you might be struggling to keep your head above water in more than one way. Kogonada rather deftly brings two such lost souls together here in a rather unexpected way. One is young with the weight of the world on her shoulders and is not sure what they are gonna do next. One is middled aged with a dying father and confronting the slow realization that they are not sure what they want from their life right now or going forward. They come together and their forged connection shows how lonely so many of us can be, the value of grabbing ahold of those fleeting moments of love and connection, and just trusting the path that life can take us on sometimes even if we do not know if it is right.
The Reel World 