Soul: Pixar's Beautiful Take On The Existential
Writer/director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up, Inside Out) proves yet again that he’s one of the strongest creatives working with Pixar. Beautifully animated, contemplative, heartwarming, humorous, and profound, Soul is everything a viewer could want from a Pixar flick.
Joe (Jamie Foxx) is a middle-school band teacher whose life hasn't quite gone the way he expected. His true passion is jazz — and he's good. But when he travels to another realm to help someone find their passion, he soon discovers what it means to have soul.
Pete Docter has made some of the best Pixar films in the last two decades, and Soul is no exception. For our money, it’s the best Pixar film since 2017’s Coco and the new high bar for Disney-produced, family-friendly entertainment. Although it stumbles a bit narratively, Soul moves in and out of deeply touching, beautifully profound, and cosmically trippy moments. It wrestles with some large, complex existential concepts that are made digestible enough for children (without being diminished), yet resonate and compelling enough for adults.
Where Inside Out looked inward, exploring the origins of human emotion, Soul looks outward, exploring what it all means and what we’re meant to be doing with our lives. For all intents and purposes, it’s the cosmically curious, philosophical cousin to Docter’s 2015 film — but on steroids (or LSD). Both films are equally inventive and audacious in their own right, but Soul takes its heady abstractions to new extremes, venturing into places that children’s films rarely go. This includes (but isn’t limited to) nihilism (something we feel is the film’s crowning achievement), a notion it flirts with for a beat, which is a topic we never thought we’d see touched on in a Pixar film.
Notably, Soul features Pixar’s first ever African-American protagonist, and it’s as much a celebration of black culture as it is an exploration of life’s most lofty questions. Of course, the whole affair is bolstered by the kind of breathtaking, cutting-edge animation that you’d expect, and it’s chock full of stunning sequences, both in a terrestrial and ethereal sense. The earthy realm is beautiful to behold, but the afterlife is what gripped us the most. We absolutely loved the non-physical, vaporous animation of the souls and the delightfully abstract visualization of the “counselors,” whose form looks Picasso-esque.
Other delightful aspects include the film’s stellar voice cast, which include Jamie Foxx, Donnell Rawlings, Angela Bassett, Tina Fey, Richard Ayoade, and Graham Norton, and the phenomenal score, which is a joint effort between Jon Batiste (who was used as a reference to ensure the sequences of live performances were animated as authentically as possible) and Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, the latter being the biggest surprise as all, since this is a major departure from their usually dark, ominous, synth-heavy arrangements. Theres’s a bit of redundancy to Soul’s narrative structure, which is essentially a string of complications leading to our protagonist’s existential epiphany, but it’s so full of gleeful whimsy that it’s hard to be bothered or upset. Its only major misstep is how it undercuts its journey by giving in to a softened happy ending, which feels a bit forced, but even that can be forgiven — after it all, it is a film for children.
Pulling from excellent references, like It’s A Wonderful Life & Albert Brooks’ underrated Defending Your Life, Soul is a touching and magical look at the afterlife and a poignant celebration of what it means to be alive. It’s a children’s film that takes some bold risks, most of which pay off, and it’s peppered with the kind of wonderment that will capture viewers from all ages, cultures, and spiritual backgrounds. In short, in a time so full of division, Soul seeks to bring us all together.
Recommendation: Absolutely give Soul a watch; it’s one of the year’s best films.
Rating: 4.5 spiritual bonds outta 5.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!