A return to form for Pixar.
There’s ultimate beauty in everything that surrounds us, we must look at it the right way to see it. When caught up in the obsessions of our lives, arbitrary purposes that we think we’re born purely just to fulfil, we begin to perceive the world through tunnel vision. How would you feel if you died right this moment with your sights stuck on one thing, knowing that you missed out on so much more? Well, you wouldn’t know cause you’ll be dead, but where will you go, or rather what will what’s left of you go? And where did what ended up as you come from? These are the sorts of existential questions that Soul (2020) throws up in a charming and beautiful manner.
Watching this film last night after a day that got right under my skin, I can say that it definitely made me feel slightly better. I’ll even go as far as to say that it’s my favourite Pixar film, with an animation style so matured and wholesome that it knows when to pull itself back to simplicity with dazzling effects and knows when to throw a sluice of colour and shapes at my eyes. The film follows high school music teacher and jazz musician Joe Gardner who dies moments after landing the gig of his life and not wanting to just accept his dream snipped short, his soul quests to reunite with his body. The places that he travels through along the way; the stairway leading to the Great Beyond, the Great Before, the Zone, and how they’re depicted go from cosmically chilling to drop-dead cute and this is where the animation shines.
Pixar’s style has really matured in this film not just animation wise but thematically too. Having flexed their drawing pens in previous films and pushing the limits of their animation abilities, this film scales it back to marvellous effect letting the strange abstract imagery of realms beyond human comprehension wrap themselves around our eyeballs. Small dots, geometric shapes and patterns tango around the frame when falling through the void and the escalator to the Great Beyond, striking a vague sense of fear into me. It’s simple but bloody effective. Landing into the Great Before, the colour palette comes to life with pinks, purples and blues running from light to deep creating this fluffy reality far away from the spheres of fear and corruption. The auditors, let’s call them, of these dimensions are just a jumble of lines and curves with their outlines effervescing away into the air, and their design is perfect. Back on planet Earth we find the usual blurred lines between cartoonish and realistic that we’ve become accustomed of with Pixar, which isn’t that impressive to me but I appreciate its appearance especially in relation to the dimensions that run under and above it. Albeit, some things did manage to catch my eye with their shimmering photo-realism, such things as landscape shots of New York city at night and realistic steel fences.
The world here is diverse which is a welcome representation, the black people are recognisable and familiar rather than the crude caricatures they used to be in old cartoons. They’re drawn as real people with real lives and issues here and I love that. Coupled with the existential themes, this heterogeneity of depiction makes this a very mature film. Nothing worth noting in the voice acting department apart from solid performances all-round, especially from Richard Ayoade who vocalises the character so convincingly that I can image all hyper-dimensional being sounding like him.
What I’ve always appreciated about Pixar films is that they have a sense of humour that tickles both kids and adults alike, of course more leaning towards the kids but you find these subtle little gems that you can’t help but laugh at, this film is full of them. It’s like being in a gemstone crevice of laughter! From philosophy to politics, plenty of little quips are snuck into the dialogue that had me and my girlfriend laughing.
The kicker of them all in my opinion is that this film shows the true beauty of life that is hidden in everything, it beckons you to take a step back and look at the things we decry with ubiquity and innocuousness in a new light of wonder and mesmerisation. Why? Because that’s life. It can often be horrid and out to get you, but when you submit yourself to the powers that be, each particle around us bursts asunder with bliss and carefreeness.
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