Soul
Once again Pixar excel themselves
with a life-affirming adventure in which a wannabe soul musician loses
his soul and struggles to be born again.
Soul-searching: Physical incarnations of Joe Gardner and his cat (centre)
You couldn’t
think of a better title, really. After all, this is the story of a musician who
lives for soul music and then, literally, loses his soul. Pixar has never been
afraid to push the boundaries of animation, either visually or thematically. The
studio’s art has been to take complex, innovative ideas and to enrich them with
adventurous narratives, vivid characters and comic detail, appealing both to youthful
and adult sensibilities. Pixar’s first full-length cartoon was Toy Story (1995) and is a perfect
example of the formula. It was the first fully computer-animated feature and
pretty much answered that question about the tree falling in a forest. Here, a
sub-theme is perfectly illustrated by the story of the little fish who,
speaking to the older fish, says: “This is water, what I want is the ocean.”
There is
much to chew on in Pete Docter and Kemp Powers’ instant classic. A music
teacher called Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), is given the chance of his
life to perform alongside the jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) at
the Half Note in New York. And, returning from his successful audition (having skipped
past sidewalks littered with banana peels, treacherous nails and falling
bricks) he plummets down a manhole and dies. Now, you won’t find many family
films in which the protagonist meets his untimely end before the opening
titles. And so we leap into A Matter of
Life and Death – but with a reverse flip. As Joe’s soul charges down the
conveyor belt headed for the Great Beyond – in the opposite direction – he plunges
through a cosmic skin and ends up in the Great Before. Ergo, he finds himself
in an embryonic dimension where he has yet to be born. There, he befriends ‘22’
(Tina Fey), a timid soul terrified of facing life, even though, as one Great
Before counsellor explains, “forgetting the trauma of childbirth is one of the
great gifts of the universe.” For some, the idea of life on Earth is a
thrilling prospect, but ‘22’ just doesn’t get it – in spite of inspirational
tutorials from Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa and Muhammed Ali. And so one of the
most offbeat double acts in animated history is established: the soul who doesn’t
want to die and the soul who doesn’t want to be born.
Pixar have
tested such metaphysical waters with Monsters,
Inc. (2001), Inside Out (2015), Coco (2017) and Onward (2020) and know just what the childhood imagination can take
on board. With computer graphics, the sky is not the limit. Besides reminding
us how important it is to live life to the full, Soul spotlights the joy of music, friendship and pizza, among other
things.
As to be
expected, the film is chock-full of zinging one-liners, throwaway gags and visual
puns, while exploring bold visual styles. Mentors in the Great Before are
designed as amorphous wisps of abstract art, while the New York backdrops are glorious
in their multi-layered resonance (repeated viewings will reward the
eagle-eyed). And the voice cast is equally inspired, running the gamut from the
real-life drummer Questlove (aka Ahmir-Khalib Thompson) to Graham Norton and
Richard Ayoade. The music, too, is ace. Originally due to have opened in
cinemas on June 19, Soul finally
premiered to the public on Christmas Day on Disney+, free to all subscribers
(unlike Mulan). Its future life on
DVD is assured.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel
House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Ahmir-Khalib
Thompson (aka Questlove), Angela Bassett, Cora Champommier, Margo Hall, Daveed
Diggs, Rhodessa Jones, Wes Studi, Sakina Jaffrey, Fortune Feimster, Calum
Grant, Laura Mooney, June Squibb, John Ratzenberger.
Dir Pete Docter and Kemp Powers, Pro Dana Murray, Screenplay Pete Docter, Mike Jones and Kemp Powers, Ph Matt Aspbury, Pro Des Steve Pilcher, Ed
Kevin Nolting, Music Trent Reznor and
Atticus Ross, Sound Ren Klyce.
Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios-Walt Disney Studios.
97 mins. USA. 2020. Rel: 25 December 2020. Cert. PG.