SOUL

Directing: A
Acting: B+
Writing: A+
Cinematography: A
Editing: A
Animation: A+
Music: A-

I have no critical notes on Soul. Only praise: this is among the most inventive, imaginative, clever works in the entire Pixar Animation canon, one of the best movies of the year, a crowd-pleaser if there ever was one but with so much depth and layered intention of meaning that it will almost certainly reap new rewards upon rewatching. I can’t wait to watch it again. My love for this movie runs so immediate and so deep, the closest I can come up with as a complaint is that this is truly the first film I have seen all year that left me earnestly wishing I could have seen it in a theater.

Outside of the world of Pixar, its visuals are unparalleled. Multiple times I was transfixed, beginning the instant jazz musician Joe (Jamie Foxx) has an accident leaving his body in critical condition, and his soul untethered and confused, on an astral conveyor belt headed toward the giant white light of “The Great Beyond.” You might think this idea of near death might bring an unwelcome darkness or sadness, but there is nothing like the tragic introduction to Up here; Joe is merely walking down the street after landing the musician gig of his life (where a delightfully aloof but wise band leader is voiced by Angela Bassett), passing a series of comic near-misses before even the accident itself passes as a punch line.

And then, suddenly, Joe wakes up as the “soul” form of himself, a little blue ghost-like creature still recognizably similar to his human form. He rejects his apparent fate headed into The Great Beyond, falls into the astral depths and finds himself in a place called The Great Before. And this place is both far too complex to describe here—it really must be experienced—and the most imaginative rendering of abstract concepts since Pixar’s own, also-spectacular Inside Out (2015). It’s not often that the script is among the things that I am consciously impressed by the most in an animated feature, but Soul’s is one of them: shout out to Pete Docter and Kemp Powers (these two also co-directed), and co-writer Mike Jones, for writing such a uniquely thoughtful and sensitive story, which so directly addresses death without ever once bringing down the mood.

It is also relevant to note that co-director / co-writer Kemp Powers is a Black man, making him the first to direct a Pixar film, an essential element of this also being the first Pixar film with a Black protagonist. These are all fairly significant changes from Soul’s initial story incarnations, which at first had no connection to the Black community; it was when they decided Joe would be a jazz musician that they also decided he therefore should be a Black man. And all of this is simply to say, had they stuck with making “22,” the other soul companion to Joe for most of the film, the main protagonist as initially imagined, Soul would likely have been fine, perhaps even very good—but these changes clearly improved the story a great deal. It seems it’s a kind of happy accident that the film’s title thus takes on a double meaning, as do so many other things in the film.

“22,” the soul whose number-name indicates how long she has been in “The Great Before” before being passed on to Earth—the implication being she was merely the 22nd soul ever created—is voiced by Tina Fey, although that voice is explained to be “a hypothetical” and she could really use any voice she wants. But, she uses that of “a middle-aged white lady” because “it annoys people.” I can imagine that one, otherwise throwaway line might trigger a bit of white fragility in a few people, who could then blow it all out of proportion. To that I say: oh, well! Incidentally, the gag barely even works on me since it’s impossible for me to imagine Tina Fey’s regular speaking voice as annoying in any way, but then, I’m gay and programmed to love middle-aged women as a general rule.

Speaking of stereotypes, Soul conscientiously avoids them among its many characters of color, offering a cast of characters heretofore missing from the Pixar canon, and giving a whole new audience something both to relate to and be delighted by. This may even be the most diverse cast of any Pixar film, also featuring the voice talents of Daveed Diggs, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, The It Crowd’s Richard Ayoade, Brazilian actress Alice Braga, New Zealand actress Rachel House (curiously, all the Great Before “staff” seem to have accents from the non-American British diaspora), and then a little out of left field, Graham Norton. And this is not to mention the brief cameo appearances by countless other recognizable voices, from the likes of June Squibb, Fortune Feimster, and more.

I was also struck by the music, something I do not often pay much attention to in a movie that is not a musical. Soul is filled with a lot of jazz, which usually does not much speak to me but I quite enjoyed it here, especially in context; I liked it enough that I may buy the soundtrack—but also because of the truly fantastic ethereal score that is heard in the “Great Beyond” and “Great Before” sequences, which, it turns out, were co-composed by Trent Reznor. I was taken by this score to an unusual degree, and it was one of countless details that only made the movie better.

And I haven’t even mentioned the humor, with which, in true Pixar style, Soul is packed to the gills. In many moments I was nearly moved to tears, just by the profundity of the concepts being examined, and still all around those moments I also laughed—a lot. There’s an extended sequence involving a human soul accidentally having been put into a cat, creating an environment and tone wildly different from that of “The Great Before,” and yet the different set pieces still complement each other perfectly, creating a whole film in which all the pieces fit together just right.

It’s doubly impressive that Docter and Powers are offering a story about people’s souls, without ever coming close to making it religious in any way. Instead, the overriding message is that of appreciating life itself, and especially as it pertains to our time on Earth—related lessons needing to be learned by both Joe, who is desperate to get back to his body and live the rest of his life in pursuit of his dreams (a desire more complicated than he realizes); and “22,” who is so contented with her existence in The Great Before that she’s been purposely failing all her tests for moving on to Earth, for thousands of years.

Soul truly has something to offer for everyone, a work of art in the grand tradition of Pixar, which is so beautiful to look at and so completely entertaining that it works for children on their level, without any need for them to catch its many truly complex concepts, which only enrich the text for the adults in the audience. If only I could have seen this one in a crowded theater . . . but, even as it is now, accessible via Disney+, Soul is truly a gift.

You kind of have to be there . . . but if you take the journey, you’ll be so glad you did.

Overall: A