Mark Reviews Movies: SOUL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 24, 2020

Animation studios, either directly or indirectly, are regularly granted the authorship of the movies they produce. It's understandable. A film is not just the result of the work of one artist, and in animation, it's even more noticeable that the work of multiple artists is on display in every frame. Pixar, which revolutionized and continues to evolve the medium of computer animation, is one of those animation houses—one of the few, really, to become a household name.

The studio has been around, maintaining and encouraging a steady collection of filmmakers, long enough now that a couple of those filmmakers have emerged, establishing themselves through the inspiration of their visions and their voices. At Pixar, we can certainly name Pete Docter, the director of Soul, as one of their stars.

He has given us a world where the monsters in closets of children have created an entire economy out of kids' screams. He has brought to life a storybook-like adventure involving an old, grieving man and a loveably odd scout. He took us inside the mind of a pre-teen girl, boldly visualizing the workings of the conscious and subconscious. With his newest (in which Kemp Powers serves as a co-director), Docter gives us a view of life after and before death, where departed souls take a long escalator toward some glaring, white light and new souls prepare themselves for life on Earth.

The film, like Docter's previous ones, is a great accomplishment of imagination, filled with real ideas, inventive design, and grounded by an emotional core about what's truly important in a life lived. It's also a clever comedy (Since kids are at least part of the target audience, it would have to be, right?), featuring eccentric characters and a second act that revolves around a body-swapping gimmick. Some of these story elements don't always seem to fit as snugly together as Docter, Mike Jones', and Powers' screenplay seems to believe, but there's little denying that each one works on its own terms.

We're here for the story, of course, but we're mainly here to see what sights and setpieces the filmmakers and animation team have devised. They give us a lot, some of it utterly unique, some of it comfortingly familiar, and, as those two worlds of the great unknown and the known start to interact, some of it downright exciting.

The tale centers on Joe (voice of Jamie Foxx), a still-aspiring jazz pianist—despite being middle-aged—and, in order to pay the bills, a part-time music teacher at a public school in New York City. Since he was a kid, after going to a jazz club with his piano-playing father, Joe has dreamed of making it as a musician.

Instead, he listens to school kids butcher tunes in the class band. Every so often a student comes with some real talent, and one of them, now an adult and making a legitimate career in music, offers him a one-in-a-lifetime gig—to accompany a renowned trumpet player (voice of Angela Bassett) at an upcoming show. This could be his last chance. He was just offered a full-time position at the school, and his mother (voice of Phylicia Rashad) wants him to take it and leave behind all those foolish ideas of making a career out of his dream.

The audition goes well, and everything seems to be in line for Joe's big break. That's when he falls into an open manhole and awakens, staring down the blinding light of the Great Beyond.

This is really just the beginning, though, as Joe's soul, a glowing blue figure with rounded edges (and glasses and his trademark trilby), escapes the treadmill toward the unknown and falls into the realm of the "Great Before." He wants to return to life on Earth in order to play the gig, but to do so, he has to pretend to be a mentor to a troublesome soul. Of the billions upon billions of souls that have come into existence and gone to Earth, this one is number 22 (voice of Tina Fey), who's proud of having made Mother Teresa cry.

To fully explain all of the remaining setup (Joe tries to complete 22's personality, so that he can take the resulting pass to Earth) and ensuing complications (Joe does return to Earth, but he doesn't end up in his body, which is currently occupied by 22) would take too much time. Instead, it's probably best to point out the more imaginative details of the film's vision of an afterlife—well, pre-life, technically.

There are fields of blue grass, where tiny souls are guided and corralled into developing personality traits. All of it is overseen by counsellors, all of them named Jerry and all of them looking like figures from an abstract painting (There are some particularly clever moments back on Earth, when one of those abstracts changes form and moves along various lines of the mortal coil). Within a sandy desert, where lost souls (looking like twisted monsters) wander in menial tasks or obsessions, astral travelers (hippies, basically) ride a masted ship while blasting Bob Dylan. A persnickety accountant named Terry (voiced drolly by Rachel House) keeps tabs of departing souls on a series of abacuses and, with a soul unaccounted for, becomes determined to track down Joe—within whichever plane he or his soul arrives.

When Joe, occupying the body of a cat, and 22, occupying her fake mentor's body, return to—or first arrive on—Earth, the film does lose some of its more obviously inspired elements (although the re-creation of New York is impressive). It becomes a more straightforward comedy, but this also allows the screenwriters opportunities to delve into Joe's passion, which he now observes being witnessed for the first time by 22's soul looking through his eyes, and 22's discovery that life, as scary and confusing as it may be, possesses wonders great, small, and personal.

The body-swapping comedy works. The lesson about the unique purpose of life for any given person is sincere and heartfelt. Soul, though, wraps all of that within a truly imaginative and inspired vision of the world beyond, and that gives the film its meaning and purpose.

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