#i could probably do a whole essay about soul and ratatouille and inside out but i will restrain myself

[skywitchmaja]

i haven’t seen too many posts about soul yet so i’m gonna link this article and also this earlier interview with kemp powers but i’ll put my own thoughts under the cut (spoilers)

aesthetically, i think it’s a beautiful movie. the animation is jaw droppingly gorgeous. the contrast between the textures and lighting in new york that looked soooo real it made me think of claymation at times, but keeping with intriguing and appealing stylized character designs, all to contrast the soft, abstracted art for the hypothetical “great before” dimension. one of my favorite designs were the startling black and white of the ‘great beyond’, which is so startling in fact, that we jump back along with joe whenever he’s faced with it. and with the main character, joe gardener (jamie foxx), being a jazz musician, music is a huge part of the artistic mood and the story itself. i don’t know much about music and especially jazz piano, but whenever joe played, it was easy to feel him getting lost in ‘the zone’

the first time we see into the ‘hypothetical’ is before joe dies— while he plays piano in a jazz club with one of his idols and gets into ‘the zone’ where we see deep blue streaks of light with touches of magenta, an abstraction of the night club spotlights, and joe feels like he’s floating along with the music. this reminded me of another of my favorite moments from a pixar movie— the scene in ratatouille where remmy shows emile the beauty he finds in food, taking a bite of cheese and a bite of strawberry and closing his as as the colors, flavors, textures swirl together in harmony. both moments serve to show the protagonist’s profound connection to their art, and how it appears to alienate them. emile the rat can almost slow down enough to appreciate the intricate tastes of food, but in the end, he best loves food for its life sustaining value, rather than the culinary art remmy loves. in the jazz club, joe comes out of ‘the zone’ a little embarrassed, to amazed stares from his idol and his former student. they’re musicians too, so they appreciate joes music more than emile appreciates remmy’s food, but he’s still alone in ‘the zone’. before that, we see one of his current students, a trombone player named chloe, get lost in ‘the zone’ while joe watches, inspired. we don’t follow her to the blue and magenta lights but we see how excited joe is to see another artist experiencing jazz the way he does. we later find out that ‘the zone’ is a place connected to the ‘great before’ where living people float in blue and magenta clouds of light when they get into the flow of music, sports, sign twirling, or whatever they’re passionate about. even though they go there in their own little light/cloud/bubbles, there’s a sense of connection in that everybody can achieve a similar feeling.

in abstract, the story itself is beautiful too. the dual protagonists compliment each other in interesting ways. joe’s goal is to get back to his old life where he is just about to make it as a jazz musician, while soul 22 (tina fey), who has yet to live on earth, agrees to help him, so when she “finds her spark”, the final step in getting ready for life, he can take her place on earth and she can stay in the “great before” as she has for millennia. both undergo character arcs and change their goals as they become more of themselves, but before any of that happens, there was one plot element that didn’t sit quite right with me...

when the trailer for soul was first released, people were excited for pixar’s first black protagonist, but disappointed because like the princess and the frog, the first black disney princess movie, it seemed like the black protagonist would NOT spend most of their time being a black person but instead as a floaty turquoise blob or a frog, respectively. well, that’s not what happened in soul. but what did happen might be worse. in attempt to get joe back in his body, a sign-twirling, pirate-ship-piloting hippie opens a portal over joe’s body in a hospital bed. but because that would be toooo easy, joe’s soul lands in the body of the therapy cat on his lap, and soul 22, voiced by tina fey of all fucking people, lands in joe’s human body. yes, both the black character model and the black  voice actor spend a majority of the movie on screen, buuuuuut the black voice actor is voicing a cat (which everyone but soul 22 hears as meows) while the actual black character is voiced by. tina fey. a middle aged white woman who’s sitcom 30 rock featured not one but three instances of blackface. there are still some beautiful moments with jamie foxx’s voice in joe’s body, including one towards the middle where joe, as the cat, begins to coach soul 22 in his body through a conversation with his mother, but as joe lets out his heartfelt words, we hear jamie foxx’s voice coming from joe’s body. i can’t say whether these moments make up for the egregious hi-jinx, especially so because i’m white, but all this to say it’s complicated. 

(biggest spoilers) as the story moves forward, both joe and soul 22 change their understanding of the world, and their goals become incompatible. soul 22 finds her “spark” while living joe’s life, and decides she may want to try a life on earth after all. the last act of the movie teeters between joe selfishly keeping his life, denying 22 of her spark and her own time on earth, and joe selflessly sacrificing his second chance so 22 could try out her first chance. part of the reason joe was so desperate to get back to his life was because he hadn’t yet “made it” as a jazz musician, and since he saw that as his “spark”, his “purpose” he believed his life would be meaningless until he did. but when joe does go back to play a show with his jazz idol, his “big break”, it’s beautiful, powerful, but it doesn’t automatically fulfill his “purpose” in life the way he was expecting. it isn’t until he’s back at his apartment, playing piano with the souvenirs 22 has collected while inhabiting his body lined up along the music stand, that he draws back on the wonderous little moments of his life-- the first time his dad brought him to a jazz club, teaching a student drums, but also smaller moments that have nothing to do with what he thought was his purpose-- his toes in the sand at the beach, moments of connection with his family, and some of 22′s memories-- looking up at the sky and watching a maple seed twirl into joe’s palm. joe realizes that his life has always bean meaningful, that he’s always had purpose, in every little moment that connected him to the world. he’s playing piano and he’s in “the zone” where he learns from the sign twirling hippie that 22 has become a “lost soul”, now that she’s found her spark and then lost it. now at peace with his own life and purpose, joe is ready to leave the rest of his life behind to get 22 her spark back. this is a little too self sacrificial to be a satisfying ending, even though joe has lived life with purpose, we still want to see him get back to his life with a newfound appreciation, in the tradition of other “near-afterlife-experience” movies like it’s a wonderful life. luckily, we get the best of both worlds-- the “great before” supervisors are so impressed with joe finding 22′s spark, they offer him a second chance at life on earth. we don’t see anything of what 22′s life will be like (though she appears to be hurtling towards the himalayas), and we just catch joe opening the door of his new life, but we trust them both to be alright, having found and understood their “spark”