Soul (2020)
Jamie Foxx voices Joe Gardner, a middle-aged music teacher at a New York public middle school. Joe is frustrated by his lack of success toward becoming a professional jazz club musician and trying to teach a group of kids who don’t seem to share his passion for music. He’s offered full-time status with the school when a former student mentions that a legendary jazz saxophonist named Dorothea Williams is auditioning for a new pianist in her jazz ensemble. Nailing the audition, Joe is exuberant, failing to notice an open manhole before falling into it. He next finds himself disassociated with his body in an afterlife existence, a soul waiting for its final destination (dubbed “The Great Beyond”).
With dreams unfulfilled, Joe desperately wants to return to his life, escaping his fate by posing as a mentor for new souls in a pre-life training area called “The Great Before.” Joe’s assignment is to direct a soul called 22 to find her spark that will keep her happy and productive before assuming her role in the living world. However, 22 is a special case, spending eons avoiding the process under other mentors (even Mother Teresa lost her cool with her). When Terry, the accountant for souls, notices Joe is missing. She pursues him after he escapes back to Earth to regain his life.
Four years in the making, Soul is set more in the “real world” than other Pixar efforts, though still exploring fantasy realms in the after-life and pre-life experiences. Souls find their essences before going to the world, returning once their journey is complete. Pete Docter solidifies his reputation as the driving force behind Pixar’s most conceptually imaginative films. He hasn’t missed a beat, with fan favorites Monsters Inc., Up, and Inside Out ranking among the best films in the last twenty years. Add Soul to that list of exceptionally creative films with resonant and inspiring themes.
Soul is similar to Docter’s other works, with character motivations governed through an unseen, highly mechanized governance system for who they are and why. Soul is less concerned with finding life’s meaning and more about finding contentment. It asserts that one can spend life discontent, regretting what it’s not, than appreciating what it is — a gift.
The seed of inspiration began for Docter after wondering what the point of the rest of his life was after achieving his dream of becoming an animator. Was there some other reason he is here on Earth that he’s unaware of? Is he just here to do more animation, or is there no point at all? This fueled Docter’s “mid-life crisis,” struggling between feelings of having no discernible goals or that he had lost his passion once he achieved his goal and wouldn’t get it back.
Docter wondered if souls come with codes that map out how every person will be. He began to think of his two daughters and how they seemed to have ready-made personalities when they were first born, one is bubbly and anxious, and the other is calm and patient. Both daughters are very different despite the same parents, living environments, and similar prenatal care. Now that those daughters have grown up, they still maintain those same dispositions they had on day one as if it were ingrained in their souls from a time before they were born.
Docter observed that many people talk about the afterlife, the Great Beyond, but not where their souls originate. He mused, “What if there is a Great Before?” What if our souls exist in a place where they’re imprinted with the things that give us a personality and spark that carries us through the rest of our lives before we are born?
Docter combined this “Great Before” notion with the feeling he had of being someone who didn’t know his reason for existence. He crafted a scenario in which a new soul chooses not to go to Earth from the Great Before because it can’t find its spark. From there, Docter thought that such a soul could eventually learn about why life is worth living if it could connect with a soul that had been on Earth and was about to head to the Great Beyond. If that old soul could show the new soul moments of its life that had meaning, then the new soul would learn and be ready to take on the beautiful and wonderful world ahead.
To bring it to life, so to speak, the animators had to determine what souls looked like. They researched what many groups – past and present – believe about souls. Many cultures describe souls as somewhat formless, like a vapor. Pixar’s animators decided to make the souls look like a shadow of light rather than darkness, but with facial expressions to give them distinction. They based the look on Earth’s lightest material that was still a solid shape, Aerogel, used in the aerospace industry.
Subjects like life-before-birth and life-after-death are hotly contested among different groups of people. They can be controversial, so Pixar treads a very fine line to avoid religious or political statements about the subject. They discussed with religious leaders, shamans, yogi, and spiritual teachers where they believe souls come from and what happens to them after passing through the mortal plane. The best way they did this was by making a pre-life and post-life experience different from what other accounts have been and not pin down the concepts to a specific religion, ethnicity, or culture. They inspected pictures from the Worlds Fair from the mid 20th Century to inspire how things should look for mesmerizing structures and abstract designs.
Early drafts were set almost entirely within the “soul” plane. 22 was originally the main character. Joe, a supporting player, not a Black jazz pianist but a white animator. Docter felt this was too “inside baseball,” changing Joe’s occupation to a struggling actor who gets his break starring in a Broadway show of “Death of a Salesman.” Docter was still not satisfied, mulling over other occupations like businessman and scientist before stumbling on an advertisement for an online master music class promoted by jazz legend Herbie Hancock. Suddenly, things clicked. Jazz musicians are a group who spend their lives pursuing a passion rather than something that will bring them money.
To capture this best, Joe would have to be a Black man because the kind of Jazz that exemplified this metaphor best came from the improvisational Black music community. However, Docter was reticent to write from a Black man’s perspective, especially on race issues, for fear of putting his foot in his mouth and offending people. He determined to seek advice from the Black community to make sure Joe spoke from a place of authenticity.
Pixar brought in many experts to consult on jazz music and Black culture. They consulted Herbie Hancock and many other jazz musicians, plus Questlove and Daveed Diggs (who provide some voice work for the movie). For Joe’s characterization and dialogue, they hired African-American playwright and screenwriter Kemp Powers to write and co-direct. Powers imbued much of Joe’s personality with his own, including having similar backgrounds, creative occupations, life experiences, and age.
The first script had Joe showing 22 about his life in the “Hall of You,” one talky scene after another. Docter and Powers, along with co-writer Mike Jones, felt that to make the pitch to 22 compelling, viewers needed to witness Joe’s life on Earth firsthand, effectively becoming the main character. Powers developed Joe’s Earth existence, writing in the barbershop scene, stressing that it was a great source of conversation and connection in the Black community. Jones came up with the idea of Joe and 22 coming to Earth, but throwing in a body swap element, whereby 22 is in Joe’s body and Joe is in the body of his hospital’s therapy cat. They wanted 22 to experience Joe’s life through his eyes, while Joe observes himself through the perspective of an outsider.
They cast Jamie Foxx as Joe because he’s not only an actor but an accomplished pianist and singer who knows about the enduring power of music. He also brings a great deal of energy and exuberance to his performance. Tina Fey makes a solid counterbalance, turning around the way Joe looks at things to gain a different perspective. Fey also contributed to the writing of her character’s dialogue.
Docter and producer Dana Murray talked about differentiating the look of the characters from other Pixar films. Their designs were partially inspired by illustrator Ronald Searle, who drew humans with stocky bodies and thin limbs. They also drew stylistic inspiration from the covers of jazz albums of the 1960s. The counselors’ have an abstract style; the universe dumbing itself down to be comprehended by the souls around them. For the look of the before-life and after-life environments, they studied the works of Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and modern sculptures. Although the character shapes and astral designs are exaggerated, everything else on Earth looks gorgeously photorealistic, from the vehicles to the buildings to the musical instruments.
Soul is heavy on philosophy and spirituality, with a dense and sophisticated plot. All ages can enjoy it, but some subject matter may go over the heads of many kids and some adults. Those in tune with these layers of emotional complexity will find it a rewarding experience. Simultaneously, some may require multiple viewings to appreciate the message it tries to deliver on appreciating life. It’s a bit like jazz in that way, perhaps not resonating with people on first listen, but something appreciated over time. Or over the course of one’s life, as one looks back at what they perceived as failures and realize that those may have been blessings in disguise, especially as he sees them through another person’s eyes.
The jazz music is fantastic, and its treatment of the style and the scene very authentic to the artform and culture. Jon Batiste, a jazz pianist and bandleader for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” provides the jazz side of things. Batiste also was used to capturing the finger movements of Joe on the piano so that everything would be real. It also has an ambitious electronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Reznor says he particularly related to how Joe feels, always thinking of himself as a failure early on because he hadn’t yet played music to a stadium of fans.
Soul is a highly imaginative adventure, clever comedy, and thoughtful meditation on life, done with emotion, humor, grace, and care. It delves into weighty subjects with an easygoing tone. This film also serves as a gentle reminder to parents that children don’t need to be shoehorned into a specific career to be a success. In addition to this artist’s journey to find fulfillment, others have become “Lost Souls” in jobs that make them money but provide no meaning to them. Their minds drift, which takes them to the astral plane, their souls roaming the desert in search of purpose again.
Soul ends on a hopeful note, an encouragement to appreciate the life we’re given every day. Like jazz, where musicians take whatever they are given and improvise something beautiful out of it, Soul film puts forward the message that we should make beauty out of whatever life throws at us. After this, Docter plans to stop directing and become a guiding force on other Pixar projects. One wonders if he, like Joe, will maintain that spark as a mentor rather than the one who plays the notes.
Qwipster’s rating: A
MPAA Rated: PG for thematic elements and some language
Run time: 100 min.
Cast (voices): Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, Angela Bassett
Small role (voices): Daveed Diggs, June Squibb, John Ratzenberger
Director: Pete Docter, Kemp Powers
Screenplay: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers