MANILA, PHILIPPINES– The global pandemic has forced several big motion pictures to delay their releases by months, examine new forms of release via streaming platforms, or forcibly continue pursuing big screen release dates. The year 2020 has been one of the most challenging years for moviemakers and it has affected thousands of people who work in the industry. Amid all of that, however, one animated motion picture released in the final week of 2020 might just be the best film of last year.
Disney and Pixar Animation’s Soul, directed by two-time Academy Award-winner Pete Docter, is a story about unfulfilled dreams, searching for purpose, as well as the sheer ecstasy of being in your moment. Featuring an all-star voice cast, Soul is clearly not your typical cartoon release and it might be the most adult-targeted film yet from Disney and Pixar.
Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) is a struggling musician in New York who pays his bills by accepting stints as a substitute music teacher for kids. His father had dreams of musical success before him before ultimately dying and his mother Libba (Phylicia Rashad) runs a seamstress shop that has been paying their bills for most of Joe’s life and she wants her son to just find a job with a steady paycheck.
On the day that Joe auditions to play piano for jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), Joe falls down a manhole and finds his soul headed to the Great Beyond. Unable to accept his fate and believing that his life as a jazz musician was just getting started, Joe tries to escape before ending up in the Great Before, where unborn souls are being prepared before they go to Earth.
While trying to find a way back to his life on Earth and avoiding detection among the unborn souls, Joe is assigned to instruct the cynical soul 22 (Tina Fey). 22 has been in the Great Before for thousands of years, missing the quintessential “spark” that all souls have, and has found no point in living on Earth. The pair inadvertently do end up back on Earth, but not as they expected, and will have to find a way to sort things out for either of them to find their spark.
Trailers for Soul would have us believe that the story revolves around music and the joy that playing or listening to music can result in amazing things, yet that is just one little part of this film. The music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have elements of techno and new age that was evident in their previous work on The Social Network that worked best in the afterlife parts of the film. However, musician Jon Batiste balanced that out with original jazz compositions for both Joe and Dorothea’s band to showcase their talents.
Foxx, who previously won an Academy Award for Best Actor in his portrayal of Ray Charles in Ray, has successfully created an entire vocal persona when he plays Joe. In fact, he sounds muted and almost humbled as Joe has been because of the many times life has knocked him down and kept him from making his musician dreams come true. His interactions with Fey’s 22 are at the heart of the film as Joe finds himself playing teacher and mentor not just to kids who might not be good at music, but even for a soul who does not necessarily want to exist.
There are parts of Soul that have slight echoes of Albert Brooks’ 1991 film Defending Your Life and Warren Beatty’s 1978 film Heaven Can Wait in its exploration of what happens when one dies and how one might want to return to their lives when they feel they aren’t quite finished yet. Yet Soul goes even further than those two when it explores how souls gain personality traits, search for the spark of inspiration that every life needs and are finally ready to truly live.
The metaphysical plane is colorful and different from any other attempts at showing an afterlife in media yet it doesn’t feel alien or too unbelievable despite the chosen medium of animation. In contrast, the scenes in New York are as alive as the Big Apple has been shown in countless films and television shows. With jazz being considered as America’s (and African Americans’) greatest contribution to culture, the interactions between Joe and his mother and her assistants, or Joe and his barber, or Joe and his students all feel genuine and don’t come off as caricatures.
It can thus serve as a good companion piece to Docter’s most recent award-winning film, Inside Out (2015), also for Pixar. If Inside Out is about how personified emotions are necessary for the character of Riley to live and grow, Soul can be viewed as how some of those traits were determined before a person is even born.
For an animated film, particularly one released during the holidays to delve into such deep, metaphysical territory takes a lot of guts, and Disney and Pixar clearly proved that they have the guts and belief in Docter and Soul to take on that challenge.
In a world that has seen its share of darkness and challenges to last several lifetimes in 2020, Soul shines bright as perhaps the brightest, most inspirational star of this year.
