Where do people get their personality? Do parents play a role, or are those things somehow determined before birth? For centuries, doctors of psychology, doctors of philosophy, and doctors of theology have weighed in on the subject, but the latest breakthrough comes from a completely different kind of doctor: Pete Docter, the great Pixar brain behind the original cartoons. “Inside Out” and “Up,” which takes a look inside and presents another intuitive and easy-to-accept metaphor for (dare I say) the meaning of life.
The result is “Soul,” a whimsical, musical and boldly metaphysical comedy-drama about what motivates one and all, featuring a cast of characters who have no body at all. “Soul” begins with the death of its down-on-his-luck hero, high school band teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a frustrated pianist who successfully auditions for a jazz band, then hits the streets, where he avoids nearly being crushed by construction workers and crushed by an oncoming car, only to fall down a manhole to his untimely end.
Directors: Pete Docter, Kemp Powers
Writers: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton
This is not at all where you expect a children's movie to begin. Not even “Bambi” got to kill off his main character before the opening credits. But then, “Soul” hardly follows the rules. Frankly, this may not be a kids' movie at all, although its release direct to the Disney Plus subscription service on December 25 (amid the second wave of COVID-19) suggests the studio is treating it as such. Joe's Death isn't scary, but it asks young audiences to acknowledge the issue of mortality in a way few films dare. And then it proceeds to distort (although “shape” might be a more accurate word) their understanding of what happens before and after people's lives on Earth.
Just before he dies, Joe gets his big break and wins the chance to play with jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) at the Half Note club. For most of his life, Joe has wanted nothing more than to be a musician. He's good too, given the improvisations we meet here: in class, at rehearsal, and later, in the solitude of his own apartment. So it's no surprise that he's alarmed to find himself on a conveyor belt through the Great Beyond, the void-like zone that Docter and production designer Steve Pilcher have imagined late-life souls enter just before being thrown into oblivion.
Again, this sequence could have been intimidating for young viewers, or for older ones, although the film treats it lightly, allowing Joe (who is the only soul who has doubts about the afterlife) to fall off the ladder. mechanics and traverse various dimensions of the Great Before, a more Champs-Elysees-style place with lilac skies and periwinkle grass where laughing souls, vaguely resembling Casper the Friendly Ghost, prepare for Earth.
It's an impressive answer to an impossible challenge: How to animate what is not yet animated? But this is a Pixar film, so it's no surprise that the team opts to kitsch the abstract idea of a precorporeal self, giving each soul googly eyes and a pure glow. What we see are adorable amorphous blobs with mind-boggling chromatic aberration around the edges: fringes of color that suggest virtual lenses can barely capture their elusive luminosity (and the opposite of old-school animation, where characters were "contained" " by thick black lines).
There are rules to this realm, reminiscent of the ingenious way Docter translated the notion of human emotion into clean cartoon terms with “Inside Out.” Nascent souls appear here and are guided by mentors: those who have already lived and seem eager to pass on their passions to the next generation. Once new souls discover their "spark", they are given an entry pass to Earth, where they are presumably assigned a child body. (It's a much more sophisticated explanation of the origin of babies than the delivery storks in “Dumbo,” or the Pixar short “Partly Cloudy.”)
That's where Docter's innovative theory about the origin of people's personalities comes into play: some components are printed in the "You Seminar" (another more corporate-sounding name for the Great Before), and others are discovered with a little guide. useful for the elderly. souls The model isn't perfect, but there is a certain brilliance in encouraging children to identify what excites them in life. One can imagine “Soul” generating first “eureka” moments in some viewers. Still, the film seems more suitable for adult audiences, in the same way as Capra's “It's a Wonderful Life".
Joe wants to return to the body that (we learn) is still on life support. But he's mistaken for a mentor and randomly assigned to a "soul mate," Number 22 (Tina Fey), a misfit who's been around for years and who seems perfectly content to never "have a life." In fact, 22 prefers it in the Great Before, where countless mentors more accomplished than Joe (from Abraham Lincoln to Mother Teresa) have tried (and failed) to find her spark. But the supervisors, a trio of classic UPA-style line drawings (Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Wes Studi), each named Jerry, are cool enough to let these two try, and before long, they find an escape that allows them both on earth.
It's going to be difficult for the "Soul" audience to keep this upcoming twist a secret, but for the sake of the review, let it be a surprise how the couple manifests on earth. Joe is desperate to get back to that jazz club, while 22 would give anything not to be dragged into her single-minded (and clearly selfish) mission to make his jazz dreams come true. (She much prefers the comfortable nonexistence of it to the assault of New York City's overwhelming noises and smells.) But now that she's alive, 22 begins to realize that she's not as bad as she imagined.
That's not a message children need to hear, although there surely are no shortage of adults who wish they'd "never been born," and "Soul" has the generous, big-hearted quality of so many Pixar films before it. That makes even a mediocre life seem like something worth appreciating. Docter and co-writers Mike Jones and Kemp Powers (the latter also co-directed) have filled the back half of the film with scenes that uplift and vibrate receptive souls.
First, there's the barbershop, where Joe realizes that his obsession with music has interfered with his ability to make meaningful friendships. He comes face to face with the tough and loving mother Libba (Phylicia Rashad) which puts into perspective some of his problems as her father. And there's the truly magical moment when Joe sits down at the piano and begins to play, letting himself be carried away by what the film calls "The Zone." As the wise and slightly eccentric British talk show host Graham Norton puts it, as a mystic named Moonwind: “When joy becomes an obsession, you become disconnected from life.”
Of all the movie's gambles (those big risks that could have caused this dazzling house of cards to collapse on itself), the most unexpected is Pixar veteran Docter telling other adults that there's a chance they could be too focused on one's own dreams. Here's a lesson from a studio where artists notoriously sacrifice their private lives to satisfy their passions, where long hours and absolute concentration are expected of their employees. And then Docter goes and takes his luck one step further with a life lesson that almost no family movie dares to acknowledge: Sometimes achieving your dream can leave you feeling emptier than before.
Whether we like it or not, that's a truth worth telling, a sincere and dark revelation of the "soul," and one that feels much more radical than the long-awaited decision to center this film on a predominantly black cast. Pixar has been far behind the diversity curve for too long: Since its inception, the company has been a boys' club in which the core team of (brilliant) white guys have taken turns directing movies about white characters: toys white, white fish, white. Cars, white ideas. They've made room to be mentors, but have been slow to diversify their characters and stories on screen.
And now this. It will be up to audiences of color to decide whether this exceptional film satisfies Pixar's long-standing void of near-total lack of representation. “Coco” was a start, though it feels like a breakthrough: a cartoon where the hero could be of any race, and its creators chose to project their imaginations beyond the looking glass. And while it's nearly impossible to reverse engineer who did what in a co-direction situation, you have to imagine that part of the film's cultural insight is due to co-director Powers (whose work, “One Night in Miami,” also makes it to the screen this fall). Judging by Mr. Mittens, the film's feline companion, the team didn't have much regard for cat lovers.
In any case, the unsung hero here, the heart of “Soul,” so to speak, can be found in the music. From Betty Boop to the Pink Panther, jazz has shaped and inspired the medium of animation (especially in its more avant-garde experiments).
Comments
Post a Comment