A lot of Disney/Pixar movies are entertaining but they don’t really have that much depth, they don’t have what Soul has. Animated movies are usually made for kids to watch, but this film was made with a more mature audience in mind. At its core, this movie is about someone who doesn’t want to die and someone who doesn’t want to live. These are heavy topics for a Disney movie, and what’s even more complicated is that Soul is like two movies in one. This movie takes place in two very different aesthetic worlds and tells the story of two diametrically opposed characters. This duality isn’t a flaw, it works to show the themes in the movie.
Part of what makes Soul great is the contrast between the real world and the dreamy Great Before. These two worlds are represented with different aesthetic choices, both sonically and visually. The beginning of the movie is set in a realistic, vibrant, and chaotic New York City. When Joe Gardener is alive and on earth the animation looks semi photo-realistic and the imagery is grounded in day-to-day life: peeling paint, public school classrooms with beat-up musical instruments, the local pizza spot, concrete sidewalks, and the brick wall outside a jazz club. All of these work together to create a detailed New York that feels alive. Then Joe Gardener falls down a manhole and dies, he is transported into The Great Beyond/Before. The contrast between The Great Before and New York City is both jarring and spectacular to view. The Great Before feels very surreal and ethereal. The characters are glowing cartoonish blue/green blobs. The landscape is rendered in pastel purples, blues, greens, and pinks. It is spare, dreamy, and supernatural. This is how the filmmakers show the difference between the human world and the metaphysical dimension. It’s like we are being transported into these two different worlds with the characters, it is very immersive.
It is hard to write about this movie because the themes and ideas are so existential, but one constant that helps ground our understanding is its use of music. The music sets the stage for each place: New York City and the Great Before. The theme of the film is a chaotic beautiful jazz track called “Born To Play”. It’s very jazzy and sets the tone for the human side of the film. “Born To Play” plays when Joe has an emotional, human feeling. This works with the main idea of the movie: being human is hard but it is worth it. That last piano key at the end of each jazz track is so satisfying that the whole song was worth it, and when Joe died that was the last piano key, he realized what he took for granted while living and wants to continue. When we are transported to the Great Before the music becomes minimalistic, synth-heavy, and ambient. These psychedelic and ethereal tracks convey the feeling of existence without being alive, without being human. Like the Great Before
The place where these two sonic landscapes meet is “in the zone.” The zone is the realm between “the physical and spiritual.” Human beings can enter the zone when they are doing something they love and are caught in a state of creative flow. Once you’re in the zone and get a taste of what that’s like, you go chasing that feeling, that spark. The only big criticism I have of this film is the concept of the zone. It is unexplained why the zone is also on the plane where the lost souls live. This is a very confusing aspect of a nearly perfect film that sticks out like a sore thumb when thinking about Soul.
Soul takes the Disney formula and brings it into a more complex world. The film is about a man taken out of the context of his existence for a day. Once Joe Gardner his life, he finds happiness. Soul tells a very human story in a completely original way by separating it into two worlds with two completely different styles.
The Verdict: Soul is a 9/10 film and a perfect example of animation in the 21st century.
Levi Jacobson Reviews 