“Soul”, Pixar’s latest wonder, has the ambition to explore questions foundational to our humanity and infuse that with the inspiration and resonance of humanity’s most universal art, music.
Joe (Foxx) has been a part-time musician teacher for his adult life, spending his life out of the classroom grinding to turn his passionate vocation for music (jazz) into a profession. When a former student calls him up to substitute in a prestigious band, he delivers a transcendent audition.
He seems set – finally – for an opportunity as a full-time jazz pianist. Unfortunately, he falls down a man-hole and must prevent a call to the great beyond for a second chance at life.
As far back as Ub Iwerks’ piano playing Flip the Frog in “Fiddlesticks’ in 1930, music is the lifeblood of animation. Therefore, it’s all the more fitting and treacherous to see Pixar and co-directors Pete Doctor, and Kemp Powers tackling this jazz fuelled existential musing such as “Soul”.
Doctor, the co-writer/co-director of “Inside Out” is consumed with the elements that make the human experience and the questions that hide in the plain sight of spiritual discourse.
Writers Docter, Powers and Mike Jones create a vivid world for Joe before shifting into abstraction. The writing team has an excellent sense of etching a navigable amount of detail for this terminal for our different transition states.
You understand that souls are on their way to physical and spiritual states – as goofy, marshmallow, glowing, amorphous blobs. You know that influential and inspirational figures get to mentor new souls, while reincarnation receives a facelift in a gag that almost writes itself.
Even parts of this supernatural world can be reached from enlightened states on Earth, pretty heady stuff to enable body swap shenanigans.
The blend of cuteness and stylistic homage in the abstract world is a new expression of what we’ve seen from Pixar before. In contrast, the augmented reality of a real city – New York – and the exaggerated but recognisable people who occupy this reality offer exciting developments.
There’s brilliant attention to movement and physicality here. Fade haircuts are crisp, and skin tones reflect transitions from follicle darkness to the near-naked scalp’s pale look. Beards have a little kick with a sudden punctuation stop of the head, and the inertia makes it bob. And the stiff delicacy that sense memory pianist fingers speak in jazz is seriously some of the most special impressionistic computer animations from Pixar (or any studio) to date.
There’s a lovely moment in the opening stretch where Joe conducts a grating student orchestra. As each slightly mistimed and skewed note stomps through the region of the tune it’s meant to step through deliberately. You watch timing create ticks on Joe’s enthusiastic and expressive face.
And then it happens, Connie, one of Joe’s students, catches the tune. And in muted shock and perplexed awe the students playing retreat from their fumbling to observe their peer ride this lightning strike. Detached, entirely in the zone, you watch Connie wail through the music. It’s joyful and Joe’s face blooms; there’s playing the notes, and then there’s speaking through them.
The music of Jon Batiste creates luminous life in the physical world of “Soul”. Blending this organic and improvisational jazz with atmospheric aural mood boards of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross shouldn’t work, and yet, it’s inspired.
Foxx feels attuned to Joe. While voice performance for animation doesn’t fit the same prescribed rules as casting for live-action, it feels like Foxx’s personality and entanglement with music made him an undeniable choice for Joe. Seek out my future TED talk about “Soul” and Michael Mann’s “Collateral” on Twitter as both films feature Foxx playing a man who needs a life-altering interventional from a near spectral being to be shaken from mother-issues and denial.
The voice performances from the tapestry of ‘real’ and ‘abstract’ characters in “Soul” will lead you on a pathway of pleasurable internet sleuthing when the credits roll. In the New York of “Soul”, we hear the world in the voices Angela Bassett, Donnell Rawlings, Daveed Diggs and Phylicia Rashad.
You’re tickled by Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Wes Studi in the ‘other place.’ Rachel House damn near steals the movie as inter-dimensional accountant Terry. Tina Fey’s 22, the begrudging side-kick for Joe, was intentionally grating (to the point that it nearly derailed the entire film).
“Soul” – as Pixar does – speaks respectfully to kids and kids at heart. The interrogation of infinite (and so far) unanswerable questions of our existence can distract from the magic in every moment. “Soul” wants you to inspire you to feel the rhythms of the universe and to have an inextinguishable spark of inspiration, and that aspiration alone makes it unique.
