Joe Gardner (voiced by Jaime Foxx) is a middle school music teacher who had just been promoted from part-time to full time. The steady job is nice and all, but Joe would rather be fulfill his dream as a Jazz pianist, working gigs in clubs and living the life he had always dreamed for himself. Feeling like he hasn't accomplished anything in his life, Joe takes the chance to set up an audition with Dorothea Williams (voiced by Angela Bassett), a legendary Jazz musician. After getting the job, Joe rushes home...and falls down a pothole. Joe wakes up heading to the Great Beyond, but he manages to break free and try to find a way back. Along the way he has to become a mentor to a troublesome soul named 22 (Tina Fey) who absolutely refuses to go to Earth and live, considering it all pointless. Joe and 22 work out a deal to try and get him back to Earth and 22 back to a carefree pre-existence.
Soul is a beautifully animated film, but that's no surprise given that it's a Pixar film. The living world (specifically New York, where Joe lives) is bustling with life all around, even if many don't realize it do to the doldrums of their everyday routines. And at first it seems like regular background that you or I (even Joe) walks by every single day without a second thought. But when you stop to take a look around you, there's a lot to see and marvel at if you let it. The people move fluidly, the buildings and interactions feel natural and realistic. Especially in scenes where a character just admires the scenery, it teems with life and vibrancy that is plain to see if one just pays attention.
The same can be said of the Great Before. It's a bright, colorful and beautiful plane of existence, with blue grass, hills, fluffy new souls bouncing around saying "hell" (no, really). The Great Before is looked after by the Jerrys, beings that are, essentially. sentient abstract lines that can shapeshift. They counsel and give souls personalities and try to help inspire them to find their spark so they can travel to Earth and be born. Of lesser note is a place called "The Zone" a darker, but no less resplendent desert where the living enter whenever they find themselves doing something they love, enjoy or are passionate about. It also is where lost souls, or folks who've lost touch with their spark of life, also reside.
The primarily inspired Jazz compositions, created by Jon Baptiste, fits the movie like a good suit. Baptiste provided references for the musical sequences with original compositions. From chase scenes to simple moments of Joe playing on his piano to get himself in the zone and lose himself in the flow of the music, each part of the score works perfectly. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross also provided music for the film, one composition that sticks out to me is when Joe first escapes the Great Beyond and falls through a traditional 2D animation sequence with heavy, industrial music. The soundtrack sounds like a must-have.
The main crux of the film deals with what one considers a spark. What makes your life worthwhile to you? When will you break from your everyday life and really, fully, truly live? What makes you enjoy living to its fullest? What stirs in your, for lack of a better term, soul? From what I've seen, having watched the movie twice, the film would have you believe that simply living, enjoying the little things of each day is what make it all worth it. It tries to dispel the notion of having a singular purpose or passion in one's life. That there's something that we love to do and that gives our lives meaning and purpose. And it's not an inherently bad lesson to learn if that's what you believe. Your career and passions are not all that life is about. To quote Shakespeare's Hamlet: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Joe and 22 both have existences they've more or less settled into. They try not to deviate from it and think they have things more or less figured out. Their shared experience, has them re-evaluate their positions on life.
All of that having been said, the overall messaging of Soul comes off as very simplistic and a little bit naive. One might consider that any further nuance would alienate younger viewers or even depress older audiences. However, life isn't a singular, one-size-fits all experience. Different people have different philosophies, different outlooks. Some of those outlooks are myopic and narrowly focused. Others are grander, more expansive and inclusive. It feels like this movie tried to have both a grand cosmic scale to it alongside a focused personal story behind it, and it's an ambitious task; but one that feels, well, like a soul trying to walk when they've never used legs before.
We do get bogged down in the humdrum of routine. Doing the same thing day in and day out with little to no variety out of a basic need to survive in a broken and unfair as fuck economic system.We've become accustomed to tuning out our surroundings and narrowing our visions to our immediate needs, wants and desires. It's what it is. But, in my opinion, that isn't living, it's existing. I'm not saying that the movie is terrible or wrong in what it's trying to say. I just think it came off as a bit clumsy and watered down what could've been a bigger, grander message about what being ready to live truly means. It treats people simply doing what they have to do to survive or feel fulfilled as "lost souls" who've been swallowed up by the obsession of their passion or been beaten down by the demands of modern living. I can see that point and it's not a bad one, but it's not particularly a new one, either. It doesn't really expand on the notion or look at people who actually do enjoy work that, to others, may appear soul-crushing or tedious.
Without spoiling, some of the plot elements of where the real world ends and where the afterlife begins don't really make a whole heaping lot of sense if you put too much thought into it, but I'd be nitpicking narratives and that's Sisyphean bullshit I do not have time for. All I'll say is, the afterlife/beforelife is not a revolving door. I get the story has to go from point A to point B, but the journey to get it to that point is a bit muddled and expects the audience to suspend a metric ton of disbelief in order for it to work. It's a Pixar film, so it's nothing new and I can easily let go of most of the plot contrivances. Most. At the end of the film, it's hard to root for the character development of someone who, most likely, won't remember the lessons they've learned during the events of the movie. It's one of those things that kind of falls apart if you think about it too much.
It's clear to me that this movie is meant to inspire people to enjoy life and that is admirable. If it inspires you to live life and go out to enjoy the sunshine or a rainy day or even to just stop to take a breath, then do so. That's perfectly fine and something we should probably all do more often. But the things we have to do to actually survive in this world will still be waiting for us when we get back. And that's okay, too. We are not our jobs, our passions, or our careers. We're all (apparently) fluffy balls of energy, teeming with personality and vibrancy that we need to keep in tune with on occasion as a reminder that we are alive in a beautiful, if complex, world. And that's no small wonder.
