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Soul Movie Review

Soul is a 2020 animated fantasy drama film directed by Pete Docter. It is one of Pixar’s greatest and most sophisticated efforts.

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“Life is full of possibilities.

You just need to know where to look.

Don’t miss out on the joys of life“

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It follows a music teacher who wants to become a jazz musician, but he suddenly dies. Then, he in his soul form tries desperately to return back to his body on Earth. This film came out after a couple of delays on streaming and is the second Pixar movie of 2020 after ‘Onward’, thus effectively making it the greatest year ever for this studio as that movie was just superb. Soul, however, is even better.

I hadn’t expected it to be this amazing. I had expected it to be too similar to ‘Inside Out’, and although there are some similarities between the two, ultimately this is a whole new, separate experience that is wildly original and incredibly inspirational. I had also expected it to be just about black experience and culture, but it is so much more than that, thus making the marketing campaign for this movie rather mediocre.

There is a lot to talk about here, but let’s first analyze the plot. This is at its core a drama film done in a fantasy realm, which is to me a beautiful combination that really works. The world that they created here is mesmerizing. At first I have to admit that I found it a bit too complicated to understand in its overly corporate inner mechanics, but once I got used to it, I’d come to adore it. Everything here was so well imagined and every single detail is meticulously crafted both in terms of storytelling and world building.

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Thematically speaking, I was blown away by how cerebral Soul is. True depth was achieved in a couple of key scenes that almost made me cry and inspired me like no other movie did this year. There is this one quote about the fish and the ocean that is deeply profound, capturing the importance of living life to your fullest.

There are a couple of scenes that truly moved me here and that made me think after watching the film. That is the mark of a truly sophisticated film – you will think about it and respect it more after seeing it. I’d come to love and adore this movie after seeing it and thinking about it more. Probably the most touching scene is the one where we see the lost souls personified as these huge monsters. They are lost people who are still on Earth, but they might as well be dead already because their life is passing right besides them.

This is what happens when you get too consumed with either your career or just one hobby. Life is more than just that. Life is just one and we all need to take a breath and truly capture our surroundings and the beauty inside everything – a leaf, a street, a building, the sun… The scene where our protagonist realizes that was incredibly powerful and beautiful to behold.

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I was pleasantly surprised to witness a movie that does pay homage to black culture and jazz music, but doesn’t put the central character just in that box, but gives him reasons to find happiness in other things as well. All of this messaging wouldn’t have worked nearly as well had it not been for the emotional journey of his companion soul.

The character development is exceptional here. Pixar usually has these amazingly realized relationships at the core of their movies, but this one might be one of their finest. Tina Fey wonderfully voices 22, a soul who has a very dim view on life on Earth. While her existence and the cause of that outlook were brushed aside, her journey was beautiful. I just wanted to see her finally in human form, but oh well, I couldn’t get it all.

The friendship that develops between 22 and Joe Gardner, the protagonist voiced by Jamie Foxx, is truly wonderful. Just seeing the joy in her face upon experiencing the corporeal joys of life was truly inspiring. As for Joe, he is a superbly realized main character who starts off as this very limited and kind of selfish man, but he becomes selfless near the end and aware of his purpose. It truly was an inspirational journey like no other and with the highest of stakes indeed.

I did like all the people in Joe’s life, they were all very likable. Moonwind is this fun, important plot catalyst amusingly voiced by Graham Norton. Terry is very memorable as this soul counter and all the characters in The Great Beyond and The Great Before, a place where souls are taught before their life on Earth, are so authentically designed. Basically what we have here is the idea of these otherworldly beings being very primitively designed in their sketchy look, but undeniably artistically inclined and reminding me of true art. That was an inspired choice that really worked for these creatures.

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The whole of Soul’s animation is just incredible. Whenever Joe arrived and left the afterlife, those scenes were suitably ethereal and otherworldly both in music and in the visual style. The black and white parts are something else while the bluish and purplish world of The Great Before is astonishing in its beauty. The part with the lost souls was also gorgeously animated and quite creepy. The character designs, both of souls and of humans, is fantastic and quite varied. This is the type of CGI animation that is both cool and artistic, which is rare for the medium.

The score in Soul is among its biggest strengths. This is one of the most unique soundtracks that I have ever heard from Pixar and any animation in fact. Fittingly enough, the scenes on Earth are accompanied by jazz tunes while the fantastical scenes are suitably otherworldly in the use of incredible ambient music that is both soothing and very celestial.

The dialogue in Soul is excellent and the humor is solid, though rare as this is mostly a very serious drama. Again, we have seen many times before the body switching formula in an animated flick, but here that was done on the deepest possible level to connect two lost souls and to find their purpose in life, so I was ultimately fine with that inclusion. Throughout, the movie is so well paced, directed and tonally coherent while the emotion is here earned instead of manipulated as can be the case for this studio at certain times.

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