Soul
The film follows a New York City jazz musician named Joe Gardner who finds himself dissatisfied with his life as a middle school band director and yearns to play jazz for a living. During the film's exposition, Joe receives the opportunity to audition to play the piano for a jazz quartet, and he nails it. The quartet's leader, Dorothea Williams, schedules him to play that night, and Joe is so ecstatic that he fails to look carefully while crossing the street and fatally injures himself.
What follows from this point forward is a spectacular journey that forces viewers to confront existential questions. Longtime Pixar fans will already be familiar with the philosophical experience that Pete Docter evokes based on his previous film Inside Out (2015), and with Soul, Docter has truly outdone himself. After Joe injures himself, his soul separates from his body, and he wakes up in a spiritual dimension between Earth and what the film calls The Great Beyond. The film depicts The Great Beyond only as a magnificent source of light that Joe appears to be ascending towards. In this liminal region between the Earth and The Great Beyond, Joe meets other souls who are also on their way to The Great Beyond, and he realizes that he is about to die. Panicking, Joe tries desperately to run away from The Great Beyond and falls into a region that the film initially calls The Great Before and later the "You Seminar".
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| Joe's soul looks toward the entrance to The Great Beyond. |
Whatever exists in The Great Beyond is never revealed. After he falls into the You Seminar, he meets an entity who describes themselves as "the coming together of all quantized fields of the universe, appearing in a form your feeble human brain can comprehend"—or "Jerry" for short. (Jerry speaks with the voice of Brazilian actress Alice Braga, but I am hesitant to assign Jerry a gender. In this post, I will refer to Jerry with the singular they.) The first question that Joe asks Jerry after "who are you" is, "Is this heaven?" After Jerry laughs and says no, Joe nervously asks whether it's "H E double hockey sticks", to which Jerry responds, "It's easy to get turned around. This isn't The Great Beyond, it's The Great Before." Although it is clear that The Great Beyond is some kind of afterlife, the film carefully avoids ever confirming exactly what The Great Beyond entails, despite its allusions to heaven or hell. (One interesting detail is that when a soul enters The Great Beyond, there is a very slight, almost imperceptible "zap" sound reminiscent of an insect hitting a bug zapper.) On the other hand, the film is perfectly happy with depicting prenatal existence in the form of the You Seminar.
Jerry incorrectly believes that Joe is supposed to become a part of a mentorship program at the You Seminar for unborn souls. Importantly, this establishes that although Jerry is supernatural, they are also fallible. They are not an omniscient god. In fact, Jerry is one of many similar beings who also call themselves Jerry (with the exception of one who calls themselves Terry). This allows the film to proceed with its spiritual discussion without offending most religions. There is still very much room for God in The Great Beyond, and the film also explains that Joe has technically not died until he reaches The Great Beyond, so none of this is the "afterlife" yet.
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| "You can't crush a soul here. That's what life on Earth is for." |
The Jerrys assign Joe to be the mentor of a rather rebellious soul named 22. (Before they are born on Earth and receive a name, souls are identified numerically.) 22 explains that she has been at the You Seminar for millennia, having gone through mentors like Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Archimedes, and Copernicus, none of whom succeeded in helping 22 find her "spark", which is required in order for souls to receive a pass that will let them through the Earth portal and be born. Joe, on the other hand, comes to believe while on the brink of death that his life was meaningless. He and 22 strike a deal: once he helps her find her spark, 22 will give Joe her "Earth pass", allowing Joe to return to Earth while also allowing 22 to skip life.
22 explains that everything about her identity is "hypothetical". She ordinarily speaks with the voice of Tina Fey, but if she so wanted, she could adopt a more masculine voice or a more childlike voice, but she opts for a voice that according to Joe sounds like a "middle-aged white lady" solely because 22 thinks "it annoys people". Throughout the film, characters refer to 22 with feminine pronouns, she and her. I suspect an entire academic paper could be devoted to analyzing the role of gender in Soul.
The film frequently utilizes "cutaway" gags for comic relief. For example, in one scene, 22 claims she is not a liar, unlike Abraham Lincoln, and the film abruptly cuts to a brief flashback of Abraham Lincoln lying about being okay with being on the penny, but becoming upset after learning Andrew Jackson is on the twenty-dollar bill. In another scene, 22 and Joe argue over the pronunciation of the word gyro (the Greek food). In support of the pronunciation /ˈjiː.ɹoʊ/ (YEE-row), 22 tells Joe that the You Seminar once assigned Archimedes to be her soul mentor, and the film abruptly cuts to a brief flashback of Archimedes trying to teach 22 how to say gyro. These cutaway scenes add little to the overall plot but provide us with a quick laugh. This cutaway style of comedy is characteristic of shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which I am currently rewatching) and Family Guy (whose most prominent viewer demographic seems to be middle school students). Because of the crudeness sometimes associated with cutaway humor, I was a little surprised to see it in a relatively highbrow film like Soul, but at the end of the day, it worked. It was funny, and I enjoyed all of it.
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| 22's wall of failed mentors includes almost every positively remembered historical figure that has ever lived |
Joe and 22 assume incorrectly that finding a "spark" means finding a clearly identifiable purpose to one's life. For Joe, he believed that that his "spark" was music, so when he died before finally being able to land his first gig as a jazz musician, he wrongly believed that meant his life was meaningless. As for 22, she has spent centuries being mentored by all these amazing historical figures, but none of them have been able to identify anything that she feels so passionate about that it might become her purpose. 22 pretends to be unfazed by this, shrugging off finding a spark as "dumb", but as the film progresses, she reveals that she is actually pretty alarmed about her inability to find her spark: "Truth is, I've always worried that maybe there's something wrong with me. You know? Maybe I'm not good enough for living."
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| "For
hundred of years, I've had no style at all. But then my life changed. I
was existing as a theoretical construct in a hypothetical way station
between life and death." |
In the scene at the barber shop, 22 provides some more insight into why she is so afraid. She complains that "they say you're born to do something, but how do you figure out what that thing is? I mean, what if you pick up the wrong thing or somebody else's thing, you know? Then you're stuck." The response of Joe's barber Dez is critical to understanding the film. Dez explains how he never planned to become a barber for a living. His childhood dream was to become a veterinarian. It didn't work out because after he got out of the Navy, his daughter got sick and "barber school is a lot cheaper than veterinarian school". When 22 expresses sympathy, believing that Dez must be unhappy with his life, Dez immediately corrects her, stating that he is in fact as "happy as a clam" with his current life. At the beginning of this scene, Joe and 22 thought for sure that Dez's spark must be barbering, but by the end of the scene, the claim that Dez must've been born with the purpose of becoming a barber seems much more problematic.
Indeed, Joe and 22 spend much of the film trying to figure out what 22's spark is, when the question they should have been asking is what a "spark" even is in the first place. When Joe and 22 return to the You Seminar to find that 22's pass has changed to an Earth Pass, Joe assumes it was only because 22 inherited his "spark" of loving jazz music. This is incorrect. Through getting a taste of life on Earth, 22 became motivated to experience more of it. This is why it betrays a misunderstanding of the film to say something like "my spark is computer science": sparks are not clearly defined and immutable purposes to life, but rather the appreciation of life in and of itself—the motivation to live.
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| "Your spark isn't your purpose. That last box fills in when you're ready to come live." |
Just as 22 was able to access Joe's memories from the time he possessed his own body, Joe is able to access 22's memories from the time she possessed Joe's body. He is able to remember directly how 22 felt during her encounter with Connie, one of Joe's middle school band students. Connie had come to tell Joe she wanted to quit band, and 22 had empathized with Connie because she too had decided to quit: 22 had quit trying to find her spark. However, when Connie reversed course and realized then that she loved the trombone, 22 became inspired and also decided then that she too would not quit. Joe is also able to remember directly how 22 felt on the steps in front of The Half Note, when the maple seed fell into her hands, when 22 had first opened up to Joe about her fears and was on the brink of overcoming them, until Joe struck her down.
Joe then experiences an epiphany. Although Joe does land his first gig, he still feels a sense of
emptiness to his life even after achieving the goal that he thought
would give his life purpose. He realizes through empathizing with 22 that his life was meaningful even without the gig precisely because of the little things that he downplayed to 22 as "just ordinary living": tasting pizza, talking with Connie and Dez, sky-watching. He begins to remember some of the most meaningful memories of his own life that have nothing to do with music: his bond with his mother and father, biking down the street as a kid and looking at the leaves on the trees, watching fireworks light up the New York skyline at night, enjoying a slice of pie at a restaurant, and, yes, sky-watching. It is here where Joe realizes what a "spark" truly is.
After realizing the error of his ways, Joe returns to the You Seminar and gives 22 her Earth pass back, convincing her that she is indeed ready to live on Earth, despite not having found any kind of clearly identifiable "purpose". 22 is still a little nervous, so Joe offers to hold her hand and travel with her through the Earth portal as far as he can. When they eventually let go of each other, 22 disappears toward a region in Asia, while Joe is whisked back to the platform ascending towards The Great Beyond. The film ends with the Jerry counselors offering Joe a second chance at life.
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| Likely the last encounter that Joe and 22 will ever have with each other |
I felt a great sense of melancholy while watching this ending because I hate goodbyes. It appears likely that after 22 is born on Earth, she will immediately forget all memories of her prenatal existence and retain only her personality. (In one scene at the beginning of the film, one of the Jerry counselors plays a video that briefly explains that all humans have been at the You Seminar before, but they don't remember it because "forgetting the trauma of childbirth is one of the great gifts of the universe".) As a result, even if Joe and 22 meet again on Earth, it is unlikely that either will recognize the other. Additionally, 22's soul will reshape itself into a reflection of the human she becomes, so it is also unlikely that Joe will recognize 22 if they both return to the spirit world together (e.g. via "the zone" or via becoming mentors for the You Seminar after dying). In other words, when Joe and 22 let go of each other while descending through the Earth portal, this is the last time they will ever recognize each other. They will never recognize each other again unless you introduce a new plot device that would allow it to happen. After all that Joe and 22 have been through together throughout the film, it is only natural to feel that they should become lifelong friends, but alas, the rules of Soul's universe seem to forbid this.
Exactly five years before Soul was released, I wrote a post on this blog in which I tried to ruminate a little bit on the purpose of life. There, I wrote that purposes are like labels that we humans assign certain things to explain how they would benefit our lives, e.g. we assign the purpose of a piece of paper to be a tool humans can write on. The difficulty is then apparent when we try to assign a purpose to life itself. Often we humans like to think each of us was placed on the Earth for a specific reason, but Soul points out that life may not be so simple. I was able to see a little bit of myself in 22, trying sincerely yet unsuccessfully to find a specific purpose that would give meaning to her life, and I suspect that I am not alone.