Soul

"Soul" is about a musician who is transported out of his body and he must find his way back into actually living. This film is transcending the depths of Pixar's most introspective animations. Every facet comes together beautifully to create an emotional symphony, resulting in a heartbreakingly optimistic narrative. It feels like too much for kids, but the script allows it all to come together beautifully with the emotionally powerful third act, including a heartwarming tear-inducing score and a relatable, well-explored story about the meaning of life. "Soul" may not have the laugh-out-loud sense of humor as other Pixar greats do, but it will touch hearts nonetheless.

There are times during the first quarter when you may believe someone's spiked your drink with an hallucinogenic as Disney's innovative way of capturing our entrance and exit to the world is developed but, as you will find, this is a film to get you thinking and, more importantly, thinking about yourself - reflecting so to speak. Delivered with the usual Pixar excellence, if this doesn't make you realise that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life then rewind, pause and start again, because the message is universally important to all - and that includes you!!!

I can't put into words how close to home this movie hit for me. Not to sound pretentious, but it's more than a movie - it's a life lesson on how to live. It'll teach you that life isn't about careers, goals, passions, or achievements. It's about living, right here in this moment, exactly where you are.

The voice acting, animation, soundtrack, writing - all phenomenal. It is officially the greatest Pixar movie ever created in my book. Kids will enjoy it, but this one is for the older crowd. It's for anyone who's ever felt like their life has been a waste. That they've made too many mistakes, that they should have done something else, that it's too late to live. 10/10

Artistically it's a masterpiece without no doubt, it's incredibly inventive like most of the Pixar movies and deeply poetic like just their greatest ones. It manages to use the animation to create and rationalize images, worlds, characters and concepts so complicated and imaginative that usually can only find their form inside minds. But at the same time narratively it feels rushed and this makes it hard to be involved, moved and you find yourself detached; so many aspects about the main character, the dimensions he cross and about the philosophy behind them and the main story needed more attention, a more elaborated development, especially in the first half where the movie don't find the right rhythm running and running without a breath, a beautiful, essential breath. Maybe it just needs to be watched a second time or even more to be fully appreciated. Still it really is a good movie, even a masterpiece under some aspects as already mantioned, but it could have been a masterpiece under every aspect if it lasted longer. It had so much to say and too little time to do it.

A fabulous story about a near-death experience, with some conventional and some interestingly non-conventional statements about life and the afterlife. I really appreciated the major lesson that Joe/Joe's Soul/22 learn over the course of the movie: that one's "spark," or inner motivation, isn't the same as obsession about something (like getting a great gig), because obsession drives many people to become lost souls, despite still living. This observation is made explicitly by one of the "Jerries:" divine(?) beings who control the "Great Before" where souls go before their incarnation, whose straight-line forms suggest computer vector graphics; but they also appeal to quantum mechanics as if to a divine law. These angels of science aren't evil, per se, although the cosmic accountant Terry reminds me of a gnostic demiurge, a being of imperfect knowledge striving for "justice" rather than "mercy." In any case, Soul is enveloped by non-denominational, quasi-scientific, and morally ambiguous pre- and post-mortem realms and their governing angels.

Despite their imperfections, the "Jerries" mean well, and prove their good will at the end, when they offer Joe another chance at living after he selflessly concedes his "badge" (and thus his life) to 22, whom he then shepherds into the next world. For much of the movie, especially when 22 inhabited Joe's body, I was convinced that Joe's body would survive, but that it would no longer be ensouled by his own soul, but by 22. That would have allowed some truly interesting reflections on the nature of personal identity, especially the inner dynamics of major changes to one's motivations and values in life.