Summary
Pixar bypasses cinemas and goes straight into our hearts (and souls) with a beautifully animated film that captures the introspection of a trouble year.
In any other year, we’d all be lining up in cinemas right now to see the annual slate of post-Christmas releases. 2020 has been, for want of a curse word, different. As such, SOUL makes its way directly into our living rooms via Disney+.
About half of Pixar’s last 10 films were sequels or prequels, a self-perpetuating trend that seems to have been solidified by their Disney acquisition. As if in answer to that, Pixar have returned in 2020 with two original films (alongside Onward) that had atypical digital releases. SOUL is quite easily the best of the two.
In this film, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a middle school music teacher who has always wanted to be a professional jazz musician. When he gets a chance to play with a legend, he thinks his life is finally on track – until he falls into an open manhole and dies. Now in the afterlife, he must work with soul in training 22 (Tina Fey) for a chance at returning to Earth.
While there are elements that are similar to Pixar’s earlier Inside Out, mixed up with a few doses of Chuck Jones’ The Phantom Tollbooth or similar, here is a film that is simply and joyously exploring its heritage. While ‘cartoon’ has become a reductive term in modern animation, director Pete Docter displays a deep visual knowledge of the medium in every frame.
Yet on a more fundamental level, SOUL explores many of the things we question in ourselves every day. Things that often get overlooked in overwhelmingly positive family fare. If Inside Out reminded us that it was ok to be a little depressed sometimes, and you can have more than one feeling at a time, here is an acknowledgement that maybe we are all unsure if we’re doing enough. If we are, to paraphrase the character of 22, ‘good enough for living.’
On a technical level, SOUL may be one of Pixar’s most accomplished films to date. From the opening moments of trippy Great Beyond animation, this is visually unlike anything Pixar or Disney has ever put to screen. The deceptively simple voids contrast spectacularly with the New York City streets, one of the most complex, photorealistic and sophisticated animated films sets we’ve ever seen.
Massive props to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who, together with their work on Mank, have delivered two of their most interesting soundtracks this year. For a film that is so infused with jazz, their typically precise work blends seamlessly and warmly with the musical set-pieces.
A minor caveat is that it briefly falls back on Disney/Pixar’s habit of turning minority characters and people of colour in particular into animals for chunks of the running time. Cases in point are Brother Bear, The Princess and the Frog, The Emperor’s New Groove and the short film Out. Even with the presence of acclaimed playwright Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami, Star Trek: Discovery) alongside Docter and Mike Jones, it’s a trope that the studio can’t seem to shake.
Nevertheless, here is a film that tells us that just living life with its warts and all is something unique – even if you’re not into jazz. “I’m worried that if I died today,” says Joe at one point, “my life would have amounted to nothing.” It’s a thought we’ve all shared at some point, regardless of what we’ve accomplished, and SOUL is a beautifully illustrated acknowledgment that failure is as much a part of living as success.
2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Pete Docter | WRITER: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers| CAST: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, Angela Bassett | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney/Pixar| RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 December 2020 (Disney+)
