FILM REVIEW
SOUL
Dir: Pete Docter
Pete Docter's last outing as director, Inside Out, had a lot of big ideas but none of the focus needed to develop them into a coherent whole. It managed to be completely underdeveloped in its thinking while simultaneously too overtly structured around an increasingly predictable Pixar formula. Soul feels like the kind of movie Docter intended to make last time out: its big ideas are grounded in enough internal logic that its abstract and metaphysical questions are communicated with an easy clarity. allowing any little gaps to be glossed over without becoming distracting. Its adherence to the Pixar formula is stronger than ever - similarities in plot and theme to the company's own Coco from 2017 are legion - but the rigour of the writing and world-building allow that underlying structure to strengthen the storytelling rather than highlight its flaws.
Soul tells the story of a struggling, middle-aged jazz musician who dies immediately after receiving his big break. Finding himself as a soul adrift in the afterlife, his attempts to return to his body on Earth lead him to mentor an unborn soul sceptical about the value of physical existence. Despite the premise's potential for saccharine sentimentality, Docter skillfully edges the film in the predictable direction before swerving into a bolder, more intriguing treatise, a hallmark of all the best Pixar movies to date.
Inside Out's messily reached thematic conclusion - that negative emotions are just as important to a fully-rounded psyche as positive ones - was a fine one for children, but embarrassingly lauded as revelatory by critics despite being the sort of realisation any well-developed individual should have before hitting their teens. Soul's mission statement isn't significantly more revelatory, but is achieved more organically and functions as a welcome corrective to the tired trope of characters finding a 'reason' to live.
A brief scene featured in the trailer, in which a besuited stock trader smashes the screens from his desk and goes in search of his true passion, hints at the Hollywood creative class' contemptuous pity for desk job workers. This condescension has deep roots, going back to medieval academics' distinction between the superior liberal arts (which freed the mind) - the humanities, natural sciences, art, music, rhetoric, etc. - and the vulgar mechanical arts, or arts of the hands: metallurgy, trade, weaving, etc. Soul uses the scene not to patronise the man at his desk, as one might expect, but as a misdirect before eventually mounting a defence of him. Joe's love of jazz does not make him freer or more enlightened than the man at his desk: all that matters is that whether each is living a life they find fulfilling. As with The Incredibles' underlying theme that telling everyone they're special encourages nobody to be, it's a message which shouldn't be a surprise for most, but is a satisfying rebuke to an unfortunately widespread way of thinking among creative types.
Big ideas aside, the movie is a visual splendour, simultaneously contrasting and overlapping the mundane and the abstract at every step. 'The Great Beyond', the place where souls go after bodily death, is represented as a staircase leading to an enormous chasm of light in the black sky. 'The Great Before', the place where souls exist before being born on Earth, is a softer, smaller playground of purples and sky-blues, protected by beings drawn in the stark, Picasso-inspired lines. Earth, meanwhile, is represented by a near-photorealistic New York, albeit one where the humans have super-exaggerated extremities (not Pixar's most appealing choice, admittedly).
The film visually emphasizes the simplicity of the big and the complexity of the small: The Great Beyond is enormous, but monochrome and empty. The Great Before is more intimate, but contains entire worlds within its nooks and crannies. The New York of Earth is loud, busy and overwhelming, but within that cacophony are infinite tiny pleasures and cultural specificities. Much has been made of the movie featuring Pixar's first black lead, but for once this isn't just a sop to identity politics: black culture is integral to the texture of the film and gives a welcome specificity to its portrayal of everyday lives.
The voice cast is a slightly mixed bag: Jamie Foxx is wonderful as Joe, ample with energy and comic charisma without ever misplacing the character's conflicted sense of self. Graham Norton gets a small but delightful role as a hippie who can conveniently transcend physical and spiritual states of being. Norton is best known for his work as a chat show host, but his comic timing and delivery are every bit as sharp as his days on Father Ted. Tina Fey's performance as the unborn soul, 22, is fine without developing much of a sense of individuality: this is, perhaps, mandated by the nature of the character, but either way makes for a companion largely defined by function rather than personality. At the other end of the spectrum, Richard Ayoade's tones are too instantly recognisable to do anything other than break immersion.
Soul is not as groundbreaking or brave as Pixar's finest output, but is among the best of its wildly inconsistent run of form across the past decade. There will likely be an abiding sense of déjà vu for those who have seen Coco, but Soul's more subversive streak, allied with a charismatic lead in Jamie Foxx, some richly evocative visuals and intelligently developed themes, make it a more than worthwhile trip in its own right. [ 7 ]
