Review: Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying with ‘Soul’
“I’m afraid if I died today, my life would have amounted to nothing.”
Pete Docter has the magic. As a member of the Pixar old guard, he knows a thing or two about making a good animated film. He assumed the director chair for the comedic antics of Mike and Sully in Monsters, Inc., pulled on our heart strings with the adventures of Russell and Mr. Fredricksen in Up, explored why we feel the we do with Inside Out, and helped pen both Toy Story and WALL·E along side several producer credits to boot. The man is tenured to say the least.
Docter’s not-so-insignificant influence helped define what we now know as the ‘Pixar Film’ while giving way to the Emeryville studio’s dominate hot streak in the 2000s. But numbered sequels and non-starter properties in the 2010s diminished the seal of quality that came with the bouncy Luxo lamp. Rarer now are the films that make you get emotional over a rat who wants to cook, and more frequent are questions whether or not you should shell out $15 to see a movie about two ogres voiced by Spider-Man and Chris Pratt.
Which brings us to where we are now: asking if Pixar’s latest offering, Soul directed by Docter, can replicate the magic of those earlier films let alone stand as a proper film in its own right. While the latest track record of the studio and the consistency of the helmer are at odds, it’s Docter who wins the day. With Soul, the same level of impressionable filmmaking found in his prior work can be seen here, complete with the charm, wit, and signature affronts on our emotions that we know so well.
Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) dreams about playing jazz professionally. During the day, he orchestrates out-of-tune notes for a middle school band, but every waking moment in-between is filled with wishful thinking. The doldrum of routine try to wither his spirits, but his big break arrives when he’s given the opportunity to play with legendary jazz player Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett). Though narratives are never so simple.
TERRY TIME!
After falling down an open manhole cover, Joe is sent to The Great Beyond — the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. Leaping from the ascending stairway to his demise brings Joe to The Great Before where he meets 22 (Tine Fey), another blue and green soul who has been trying to find her spark at the ‘You Seminar’ for centuries. Monitored by the Jerrys — wonderfully animated single-line beings of cosmic origin who shape a soul’s personality — 22 and Joe embark on an endeavor through the ethereal realms of life and death to get back to Earth, reunite Joe with his physical self, and fulfill what he was always meant to do.
Soul most closely resembles Docter’s Inside Out, both in narrative similarity and thematic expression. The plot structure sees our main character encountering abstract ideas materialized as cartoon renderings in an effort to return to some prior state with new found learnings, but in many ways Soul feels like a more mature evolution of the thematic ambitions present in Docter’s prior work. Make no mistake this film is still tempered with the Pixar-isms that make this a palatable, mass market release in the Disney stable, but the core ideas are very much existential, making it resonant more with the parents in the audience than the kids sitting next to them.
The film likes to ask larger than life questions. What is my purpose on Earth? What is a fulfilling life supposed to look and feel like? What does all this *living* add up to? I like to imagine these questions will have the same impact on the general populous as they do on this twenty-five year old, of whom found them rather ominous and foreboding for someone my age, and if anything there’s enough kick to get you to do that one thing you’ve been putting off time and time again.
It speaks to Docter’s ability to take commonplace themes and make them more fantastical than most. We’re wooed by the film’s technical allure. Charmed by its witty retorts. And moved by its overt appeals on our emotions, all standard procedure from the Pixar playbook Docter helped pioneer. But even so, in all its familiarity, it’s still a remarkably fine tonic that reminds us to get busy living or get busy dying.
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