Soul review: Pete Docter is Pixar’s top dog (or should that be cat?)
Jazz pianist Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) spends his days teaching music to mostly disinterested kids.
He’s offered a full-time job at the school, something his seamstress mum urges him to accept, but he sees it only as a ticket to a more dull and dreary future.
His dream is to make it as jazz musician.
And, thanks to one of his former students, he is finally offered a chance at his big break but the same day, overwhelmed with excitement and joy, he falls down a manhole and dies.
On an escalator ascending to ‘the Great Beyond’ (in a scene almost directly lifted from A Matter of Life and Death) he refuses, wading against the crowd and trying to force his way back to life.
Instead Joe falls off and ends up in ‘the Great Before’ where soul counsellors prepare unborn souls for their life on Earth.
Posing as an instructor Joe is assigned 22 (Tina Fey): a troublesome, cynical soul who refuses to go to Earth and, quite literally, sees no reason to live.
But Joe sees 22 as a ticket back to his body and a chance to have his shot as making it as a jazz musician.
Directed by Pete Docter Soul is similar to his 2015 masterpiece Inside Out (in fact, you could swap titles and noone would bat an eye).
They’re both existential buddy movies presented as a race against time with no ‘villain’ beyond the ticking of the clock (nb: one of the funniest lines in Soul is simply about telling the time).
But rather than tackle the struggles of personality and identity, Soul is bolder still— instead contemplating the formation of human personalities, the concept of determinism and even the origin of inspiration.
It’s heady stuff, literally, and some of its deeper themes and theories will probably go over the head of its younger audience but there’s still some artful slapstick comedy to enjoy (including an extended sequence where Joe’s soul is trapped in a cat).
Crucially, despite its morbid subject matter, Soul never loses its light-hearted tone nor gets bogged down in religion.
Graham Norton’s spiritual sign twirler Moonwind captains a purple pirate ship rescuing lost souls. Rachel House’s persnickety soul counter Terry is a comedic highlight and Richard Ayoade’s soul counsellor Jerry is just the right side of condescending, carrying it off with a humorous, knowing charm.
For a film about death and the afterlife Soul features little religion, in fact it is almost secular. Docter, himself a Christian, steers well clear of the G-word and prayer is scarcely mentioned (if at all).
That’s not to say Soul doesn’t have the courage to take risks.
No, not the predominantly Black cast (something longer overdue in Pixar’s output), but with the over-arching message that becoming fixated on pursuing your dreams can stop you enjoying the rest of your life.
And one of the biggest gambles, and what really makes Soul into a masterpiece, is the score which finally balances jazz with the New Agey sound of the before-and-after life.
Pixar recruited Jon Batiste for the former while Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross provide the latter (a penny for whoever predicted Reznor’s career trajectory from Nine Inch Nails to scoring Pixar films).
It all blends together beautifully, much like the animation, a marriage between the other world and Joe’s world that he is so desperate to get back to.
For a film that is a race against time, Docter also gambles with the third act, slowing down when other films would instead speed up.
Not only does it allow Joe some moments of touching introspection we’re also asked big questions about purpose and meaning.
The gambles all pay off and make Soul not only Pixar’s most rewarding film in years but also its most powerful.
Soul is now streaming on Disney+
