Soul
From Woody to Dory to Sully, the characters of Pixar have endured long after our introduction to them. Pixar's characters remain with us not only because of their memorable personas, but because they are infused with the foibles and struggles we all feel and know. Beneath the imaginative stories and vibrant worlds, Pixar's best films all share this element. Woody succumbs to jealousy and fights with living past his purpose. Dory feels abandonment and loneliness due to her mental illness, unable to remember and thus connect. Sully faces sacrificing all the work and time he and Mike have spent together for the greater good of protecting Boo's innocence from exploitative forces. They are built on more than cheap morality lessons or silly laughs.
At times, Pixar has become a victim of their own success falling prey to uninspired sequels and prequels banking on the appeal of revisiting beloved characters over and over but at the expense of that which caused us to connect with them at the start. When another Pixar film was announced, it was not as exciting as it had been, particularly with so many numbers in the titles. But then in some recent projects, Pixar's creative direction shifted, drawing those underlying issues of what makes us (and their best characters) who we are to come to the foreground of their films. Enter Soul.
In Soul, directed by Peter Docter, we meet Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist teaching music at a local school and struggling to realize his dream of playing music for a living. Pixar speaks my language with this continuation of introspection, visualizing the world within us, not just who we are, but why we are. Who can resist Pixar's particular brand of existential angst when the Carl Jung jokes start flying? Soul asks what makes us who we are, what our 'spark' is, and whether our purpose derives from it. These are heady questions, similar to the landscape of Docter's previous work Inside Out, and with Soul, I feel the strengths are honed and refined to a poignant edge.
Pixar's magic is revealed when they can combine their unique insight and exploration of human nature with their inventive visualization of our being's unseen inner workings. Then they use those truths to tell nuanced stories with complex characters that can resonate with child and adult alike. Soul hits all these marks all while delving into the dauntingly intangible spiritual side of humanity.
The draw for Soul isn't color, sound, and indulgent animation, but connection through thoughtful characters and careful craft. The humor stands out for its intelligence without completely pandering to adults or excluding children. You won't find the next new face for a toy line or spinoff here, but rather a fellow, "common Joe", whose story resonates with our own soulful yearnings. It's not just the children who benefit from interacting with how they relate with the everyday they find themselves in. It's something everyone struggles to maintain as they live: a hold on who we truly are rather than who we have become passively comfortable being. It's the best Pixar film in a decade, and though Joe's face won't grace half as many lunchboxes as Buzz's has, I look forward to revisiting his story again and again.
- RyGuy