David Fisher/ShutterstockIn A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, there are magic doors. That’s it, there’s no explanation for why David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie) can walk through magic doors standing in the middle of nowhere, and get transported back to key moments in their lives. Is it time travel? Do they have to abide by Back to the Future rules? Why is this happening, and who is making it happen?For After Yang director Kogonada, who helms the surreal new fantasy film from a script by Seth Reiss, none of that matters. His goal with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey was to make it so the audience doesn’t question that world.“No one really explains the cat bus [in My Neighbor Totoro] or [why things happen] in Spirited Away,” Kogonada tells Inverse. “There is a meta deep world explanation, but you don't go into a Miyazaki world trying to get the sci-fi answers to every reason why something that shouldn't happen happens and it's fantastic.” “There's a real Asian-ness to that slippage between the fantastic and human emotion that I think is different, but proven to be universal.”If it isn’t clear, Hayao Miyazaki films, and anime films like Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, are a huge inspiration for Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a magical realist tale about two people who meet at a wedding and embark on a strange odyssey through each other’s memories. And when I tell Kogonada that watching A Big Bold Beautiful Journey was like watching a live-action adaptation of an anime I hadn’t seen, he was flattered.“Wow, that's such a high compliment. Because we were like, ‘Could we do that? Could we bring that world?’” Kogonada says. “There's a real Asian-ness to that slippage between the fantastic and human emotion that I think is different, but proven to be universal.”David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie) encounter a magic door. | Sony PicturesThough he is of Japanese descent, Kogonada’s movies aren’t exactly fully Asian — there are a few actors of Asian descent in his cast, like Justin H. Min in After Yang or John Cho in Columbus, but his movies mostly relay that feeling of “Asian-ness” that he describes. After Yang, for example, is heavily indebted to the Japanese coming-of-age thriller All About Lily Chou-Chou. And with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Kogonada says it was the first time he “really allowed anime to be a part of my look book.”Inverse spoke with Kogonada about translating the magical realism of anime, how he scored Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi, and getting Colin Farrell to do a Broadway musical number.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Kogonada at the US premiere of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. | John Nacion/Variety/Getty ImagesThis is the first movie you've directed where you didn't write the script. How did that change or did it change your process?First, when the script came to me, I didn't expect to necessarily direct a film that had already been written. It really was me being so delighted by the script and the rhythm of it, and the possibility. It had some DNA in the script itself that I was like, oh, it will really allow me to explore some things that I was really in the mood to explore, just in both the head and existential space. I was really surprised by it.Then I knew that there was a pass that I wanted to do on it that would make it even more personal. Then once I thought about Colin [Farrell] for the role, we wanted to do a pass that made it a little more closer to how I imagined Colin playing in it. There was still a lot of space for us to do a pass that really allowed me to feel ownership of it. I should say that Seth [Reiss], who's the writer for it and really was generous about it, had written a beautiful script to begin with.“I love the theater of doors.”Can you talk about that personal element that you brought, in your pass of the script?The opening car rental agency and the audition of it, and all the performativity of it. Initially, it was buildings on the side of the road. I love the theater of doors. I just thought, oh, I want our magical realism to be the thing that you feel when you're in a theater or even a high school play. You just see these sets on a stage, but at one point, you buy into it all. It really sparks both a kind of playfulness and an imagination that sometimes feels deeper than reality itself.The high school scene, which is a marvelous scene, was always written the way it was and I kept it intact. That high school scene, I just allowed that DNA to spread in both directions and really become the approach to our film. Seth is such a fan of theater. As soon as I said, "Hey, this is the kind of thing I'd like to do and explore," he was so open and into that as well. It was that sort of element.Kogonada directing Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie on the set of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. | Sony PicturesYou talk about theatricality a lot in this movie. Not just with that musical scene, but also I noticed later on, there are black-box theater scenes, where David and Sarah have their conversations in this abstract space. What was the thinking behind those scenes?Even in the first reading of the script, although it wasn't there, I felt that layer into it. It started getting me excited. I think that was the first thing I asked Seth. I was like, "Hey, there's this layer that feels like it's already in the film," which is some deeper sense that performance, which again was already in the DNA of the film, that we could really explore and really have permission.We all remember high school productions, we all remember playing and imagining.Speaking of the magical realism and the specific look of the movie, I know that the production design was inspired a lot by Hayao Miyazaki's films. When I think about magic doors too, I immediately think about Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle and the magic door at the center of that. Was that movie a large influence?Yeah, [it was] on my list. When Katie [Byron], the production designer, and [cinematographer] Benjamin [Loeb], and I were talking about it, we were like, "Can we bring [that look in]." Because there's such an emotional truth and realism to certain anime, certain directors. I think [Makoto] Shinkai does that as well. Where there is a deep emotional truth, and yet anything in that world can happen. Buses can become cats and all of that, but it fundamentally deepens our feeling about going through certain human experiences.Howl's Moving Castle, of course, was Miyazaki's maybe most romantic film, too. I love that film. Really, to be honest, when I was doing the temp, so much of that music I just pulled from Howl's Moving Castle because it's such a beautiful world.The look of the film was very inspired by anime films like Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. | Sony PicturesWere there other films or other influences that you brought into this movie as well? For example, After Yang, you pulled a lot from All About Lily Chou-Chou, which is a film that I really loved as a teen and it really haunted me.There are a ton of influences. From Fellini, to Lubitsch, and Forsyth, to Eternal Sunshine, that period of '90s films where they were exploring human emotion, but there was all this construct into it.I don't think one had the imprint, "Oh, this is the thing we're pursuing." But there were a lot of those films that were in conversation with the kind of blend between the real and the constructed, but really we were driven by emotional truth and ways to get to it.Speaking of the Miyazaki connection, you got Joe Hisaishi as the composer for this film. How did you get him? Because as far as I know, I feel like he's pretty selective with filmmakers who he works with, which is Miyazaki and a handful of other Japanese directors.He has never soundtrack-ed a Western film; it's all Asian. His rep reached out to us. It's crazy to even imagine that. They were like, "Hey, would you ever be open to Hisaishi-san composing for this?" I was just immediately it was a yes. Yes. It was like a dream for me. Yeah, even now, I can't believe he contributed the score to it.“It was really, really a collaboration I'll never forget. I'll take this to the grave.”Really, I was really also wanting to know how he would tackle the music. I did not give him many notes. I loved the surprise of it. He added a layer to it that I would not have expected. I think in the hands of any other composer, you know the music that they might create. His came from a different space that I loved. It helped to evoke the sort of film that you're evoking in this movie as well.His sense of romance and his sense of this layer that was happening underneath of it was really inspiring. There was a rhythm to it. It was really, really a collaboration I'll never forget. I'll take this to the grave.Kogonada wanted to immerse audiences in this magical world. | Sony PicturesEven though you didn't write the script for this film, I feel like there is a thematic through line with Big Bold Beautiful Journey and After Yang in their depictions of lives through a collection of moments and memories. Was that something that you drew a connection to as well, or is that just something that drew you to the script subconsciously?I think it's always subconscious. I don't think about connecting dots or anything. But some other people have mentioned that, too. We're all haunted by memories, so it's universal. But I do love the exploration of memories in film. I think film itself is a memory. It's a recollection of captured moments, so there's something deep in the medium of cinema that I think is so conducive to exploring memory.In this case too, I really like this question about, can you restore belief in the possibility of love? As you get older, as you get more cynical. I was trying to understand that question maybe even before the script itself. It is always in some ways about your past that will get you stuck and make it impossible to move forward. When I encountered [the script], I thought it was such a beautiful, fun, original way to think through the ways in which the past haunts our present and affects our future.It helps to not explain away the time travel elements, but whenever you're making a time travel film for example, you're always beholden to certain rules. But with this one, the rules don't really matter. The car rental agency exists and there are funny angels to guide you.I love how [with] every door, the rules change a bit. There's no need to explain it because we're now in the world of exploration and play. It's almost like a play therapy that you have to do to reconcile with your past. Are they really entering the past and are they changing the past? I'd probably say no, it's more about their subjective experience of trying to understand something about those experiences to move them forward.I just love that at any time they can say, "How old am I?" You can say, "12 or 15," and we just accept it and they accept it. There's something to me far better than special effects to allow that to just immediately we embrace it, as opposed to changing the way they look suddenly. That's the magic that I wanted to really explore.Kogonada doesn’t want audiences to get caugh up in the rules of the world, like why a car rental agency has the power of time travel. | Sony PicturesI feel like I've seen more of an acceptance of these kind of magical realism films lately too, because there was Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman. Previously to that there was Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai, which is also an anime film that was all about parent-child connections.That's really insightful. I feel that in a lot of films where they are playing with the construct of reality and we just accept it. Maybe it's because also we live in such a mediated world and we're so exposed to different forms. It used to be that you felt like you had to train an audience with a language of cinema when you do that. Now, we're effortlessly guiding through different forms.But I also think we're in a world too, where deepfakes, and AI, and people talking about fake news, and all of this stuff that has made us so suspicious about where truth can be found, and what is fake and what is real. But really, this is the medium of artists. We've always used artifice to try to get to something more profoundly human.“The question is can we still find something deeply human and authentic as we navigate an increasingly mediated world?”Is the way that this movie treats technology in line with how artifice is just something that people are starting to brush up against? The GPS, for example, not really being a GPS. It's this voice of God situation.Yeah, not just guiding us geographically, but existentially. Is it a threat? Is it a utopian? Those questions are not as interesting to me as, how do we navigate our own human lives? Because we are doing this every day. You and I are talking through Zoom. We both have glasses that's augmenting our vision. In a different world, we would be called cyborgs because of it, because we are constantly using technology to aid communication, to aid our vision, to aid even sometimes our emotions. This is just our world. The question is can we still find something deeply human and authentic as we navigate an increasingly mediated world?A Big Bold Beautiful Journey opens in theaters September 19.