Soul (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Perhaps the most existentially-minded of Pixar's movies, the aptly named Soul hit Disney+ during the most unusual holiday season we've ever experienced. Apart from its sense of joy and entertaining delivery, its themes of finding purpose, self-discovery, building community, and sacrificing for others hit pretty hard given the year preceding its release. It helps, too, that its protagonist is a Black man, it was co-written and co-directed by a Black man (Kemp Powers), and it features the music of a Black man (Jon Batiste). In a genre dominated by white people, produced by a company built on whiteness, and the generally white state of the industry despite recent controversies, Soul is important and cannot be easily separated from its cultural context. Unfortunately, it's also hard to overlook its debut on an exclusive streaming platform rather than in cinemas, and I'm not sure it's as racially progressive as some have touted.

The story concerns a middle school music teacher named Joe (Jamie Foxx) who dreams of making it big as a jazz pianist. When he finally gets the chance to make it big (with Angela Bassett, no less!), he suddenly falls into an open manhole and winds up comatose. His spirit manifests on an ethereal stairway leading to the Great Beyond, much to his horror. Hoping to escape his fate and return to his suddenly successful job and first legitimate gig that night, he flees, falling into a purgatorial realm called the Great Before. Journeying through this strange spiritual landscape, he meets other souls and their mentors/guardians, but one in particular leaves a stark impression. She goes by 22 (Tina Fey), and she's a cynical and bitter but bored soul, absently existing without a "spark" of purpose or interest that would allow her to travel to Earth and live among humanity. Naturally, they work together to return to life, and naturally, they have more than a few misadventures doing so.

It's a lot of fun, helped by lovely music and the sort of absurdist animated humor mastered by Pete Doctor, the credited director and co-writer, who has also helmed Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, the latter of which feels like direct inspiration for Soul. In fact, the netherworld of spirits in bright lights, ghostly Cubist mentors, and a shifting, candy-colored landscape feels more like a direct counterpart to Inside Out than anything resembling a unique aesthetic. And, like that movie, this feature frolics between entertainment and surprisingly challenging questions about the purpose of our lives, our choices and livelihoods, and the ways we get what we want (or don't) and the consequences of those choices. But it's all fairly light-hearted despite its weight, much like the soulful jazz music Joe plays. When he goes "in the zone," most artists can appreciate the sensation of satisfaction and fulfillment taken for granted by others, but beautifully dramatized here in floating spheres of the spirit world.

And while the film's emotional strengths cannot be overstated -- I openly wept in a scene where Joe confronts his mother, voiced by Phylicia Rashad, who is not supportive of his dreams to play music -- its artistry cannot be praised for novelty, and its unfortunate plot device of turning its Black protagonist into something even more Other for most of the film is all too familiar. More disturbing, Docter himself claimed to know nothing about this trope during production. By the midpoint twist of the film, which admittedly helps its pacing and purpose a lot, the duo find themselves back on Earth, but with 22 inhabiting Joe's body. Get Out, much? And then, apart from a dying Black man preparing to sacrifice himself so the white woman can go live her life on Earth (a conclusion that, thankfully, we were spared from at the last possible instant), there is the most disturbing scene in the film: when a "mentor" or whatever those Cubist spirits are, hunting Joe, mistakes another Black man for his prey and traumatizes him. All Black men are the same, am I right?

I certainly enjoyed the movie, but I suppose my criticisms stem from the disturbing tendency for people to be less than critical when a popular work starts performing its own woke-ness. Don't mistake me: its championing of jazz music as a crucial cultural tradition and touchstone is brilliant, as is one scene that takes place in a Black barbershop. Several small interactions reveal that the film, despite Big Picture issues, succeeds marvelously in centering around a lived experience beyond the usual Disney/Pixar stories of white, middle class normativity. But I must admit to being disappointed in the movie's own lack of internal logic and organization. Inside Out and Monsters, Inc. were fiercely true to their own mythologies, almost overwhelming in their creative structure and rules. But this time, even with the colors and lights, I'm not altogether sure that the various devices and images add up to a cohesive whole. The moral of this story is essentially, I suppose, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live," but Dumbledore said the same thing several years ago, and frankly an encouragement card from Hallmark could have a similar effect. 

Soul does, however, boast Graham Norton's vocal talents, which really should have been capitalized upon a long time ago by Disney, etc. And speaking of capitalism, one brief scene has stuck with me since viewing this movie, and I think I finally understand why. While learning about "sparks" and purpose, one lost soul suddenly returns to Earth, freed of the doldrums of his office job, and exclaims in front of his co-workers that he has wasted his life working in hedge funds. It's very funny, and the sort of meta outburst we expect in these movies. But I cannot help but fear that Disney, quickly monopolizing the industry around the world -- which launched an exclusive streaming service for its own material and any products it can get its hands on, which quietly has been locking away its new 20th Century Fox titles in its terrifying "vault", which notoriously sued daycares for murals of its characters -- is playing a strange sort of poorface charade, pretending to lecture us about the moral bankruptcy of modern capitalism.