Direction: Pete Docter, Kemp Powers. Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove soul review, Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, Angela Bassett. GP, 100 minutes
Pixar has already tackled some of life's big questions: why do we feel the emotions we do? Is there life after death? Could a rat cook a three-course meal? His latest, Soul, goes straight to the point. Why not embrace, head-on, the greatest mystery that exists: life itself? What is, after all, the point of all this life? The studio is certainly up for the challenge. That won't surprise anyone. But Soul doesn't just live up to Pixar's incredibly high standards, it represents the best the studio has to offer: beauty, humor, heart, a punch to the gut of an existential crisis. Children will laugh and cheer; adults will sob until their muscles ache.
The film's soul-searching (ahem) comes courtesy of two very different people: the first is Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a man who has placed jazz music at the very center of his existence. It's all he talks about. It's all he thinks about it. And life, for him, will only have a purpose once he reaches the big moment. For now, he languishes in mediocrity, working as a high school band teacher; his students are only capable of creating a discordant tangle of off -key notes, monotonous yawns, and the rhythmic tapping of phone screens. One day, Joe finally gets the big break from him. Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), a jazz heroine, suddenly needs a pianist. As soon as she gets the news , she falls into a sewer to her death. Oh good.
Of all the movie's stakes, those big stakes that could have caused this dazzling house of cards to come crashing down on itself, the most unexpected is Pixar's vet Docter telling other adults that there's such a thing as being too focused on one's dreams. Here's a lesson that comes from a studio where artists notoriously sacrifice their private lives to indulge their passions, where long hours and uncompromising focus are expected from its employees. And then Docter goes and pushes his luck a step further with a life lesson that almost no family movie dares to acknowledge: Sometimes achieving your dream can leave you feeling emptier than before.
Like it or not, that's a truth worth telling: a candid reveal of the dark night of the "soul," and one that feels far more radical than the long-awaited decision to center this film around a predominantly black cast. Pixar has been way behind the diversity curve for far too long: Since its inception, the company has been a boys' club in which the main team of (bright) white boys have taken turns directing movies about white characters: white toys, white fish, cars, white ideas. They have made room to be mentors, but have been slow to diversify their characters and stories on screen.
And now this. It will be up to audiences of color to decide if this exceptional film fills Pixar's long void of almost total non-representation. "Coco" was a start, although it seems like a breakthrough: a cartoon in which the hero could be of any race and the creators of it chose to project the imagination of him beyond the mirror. And while it's nearly impossible to reverse-engineer who did what in a co-direction situation, one has to imagine that part of the film's cultural perspective is due to co-director Powers (whose play, "One Night in Miami," also makes it to the screen). this autumn). Judging by Mr. Mittens, the film's feline sidekick, the production team wasn't very kind to cat lovers.
The story, co-directed by American playwright and Pixar's first black co-director, Kemp Powers, forces viewers to question whether we are living our lives with meaning and purpose every day. Joe realizes when he is welcomed into the afterlife that not getting the chance to share his gift of music with the world would be the real tragedy. He can undo and dodge the death watch for so long, but ultimately it's a race to avoid the inevitable.
There will be those who dismiss the animated film as a simple children's film. I beg you not to. Soul is a rich story for all ages with an important reminder to live each day to the fullest.
