Pixar's "Soul" — A Reluctant Understanding of Purpose (Part 2: The Scenes)
Does the movie succeed at emphasizing the fragility of life?
Hey everyone.
Last night saw some of the worst flooding New York has seen in awhile. Thankfully I didn’t have any in-person classes today — I hope everyone is alright.
This is the second part to my Soul review (the first part is here.) In this post, I’ll talk about scenes that don’t sit right, the ending, and what I managed to enjoy about the film. Again, if there’s anything I missed or got entirely wrong, my e-mail is tylerthomasmart@gmail.com — feel free to berate me.
Also here’s an unsolicited song recommendation.
Thank you!
tylermart.substack.com
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QUESTIONABLE SCENES:
Mother Scene:
Where Dez’s scene is strong, Joe’s confrontation with his mother falls miserably short. Libba works as a tailor, and forcefully encourages him throughout the film to pursue a “career” — a jazz pianist falling outside the category. In the beginning of the movie, when Joe is offered a full-time teaching position at the school, she expects him to oblige — as any mother would, whose son seems concerned only with the inelastic performing arts. This makes their final, emotionally-loaded confrontation suspenseful, although thematically conflicting.
To finally resolve their long interpersonal conflict pursuing his passion for music, he instructs 22 into a monologue she carries away:
“I finally land the gig of my life, and you’re upset … Music is all I think about, from the moment I wake up in the morning, to the moment I fall asleep at night … This isn’t about my career, mom. It’s my reason for living … I’m just afraid that if I died today, my life would’ve amounted to nothing.”
Realizing she’s been in opposition to his dreams, Libba retrieves Ray's old jazz suit for him, and rewards her son with her loyalty.
The anticipation of Joe eventually realizing nobody has inherent “purpose” falls into question. Here, Joe makes the case for having a purpose (a declaration strongly against the message of the film), and is strangely rewarded with his father’s suit, one of the strongest emblems in the movie. If the point of the movie is to explain the harm caused by believing in a “purpose” for living, why is Joe rewarded for convincing his mom it’s true?
Stoop & “Fish” Story:
After leaving Joe’s mother’s tailoring shop, Joe and 22 sit on a stoop. Joe (still trapped in a cat’s body) elatedly rambles about his upcoming show with Dorothea Williams. 22 sits, and for a quiet moment, is carefully observant at the soft glory at being human: a father with his daughter, friends sitting at a café, leaves brushing the ground, and a tree seed spinning into her hand. When asked about what she thought of Earth, she meditates on her “purpose”:
“But then you showed me about purpose and passion … maybe sky watching can be my spark! Or walking. I’m really good at walking!”
Joe replies, disappointingly,
“Those aren’t really purposes 22, that's just regular old living.”
22 doesn’t directly respond to this, and rightfully so: she’s only just now experienced Earth, and is still trapped under the impression of a required “purpose” — as is Joe. It inspires a brief chase into the subway system where they are finally captured by Terry, and brought back to The Great Before.
It’s here Joe learns by one of the ethereal proctors:
“We don’t assign purposes, where’d you get that idea?”
Confidently, Joe responds:
“Because I have piano. It’s what I was born to do. That’s my spark.”
“A spark isn’t a soul's purpose. Oh, you mentors and your passions … your purposes, your meanings of life. So basic.”
Here is the revelation, but despite this grand omission, Joe is unconvinced. He plummets to Earth and returns to his body, cheating death once again, and plays his dream gig with Dorothea Williams. After the show, he speaks with her, and feels melancholic:
“It’s just I’ve been waiting on this day for my entire life. I thought I’d feel different.”
After being logically explained there is no pre-installed purpose, he has to feel his dreams endure that crushing weight before understanding life is more; also, understanding he acted selfishly towards 22. As prophetic of an idea, Dorothea metaphorizes this with (at best) an anticlimactic story of a fish:
“I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to the older fish and says, ‘I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.’ ‘The ocean?’ says the older fish, ‘That's what you’re in right now.’ ‘This?’ says the young fish, ‘this is water, what I want is the ocean.’”
The sentiment stuns him until he arrives home.
For a life-changing moment whose setting is a New York sidewalk, Joe’s open-mouth, silent epiphany is appropriate. But, I wish there was more. Here is a moment when Joe’s existential efforts at cheating death have failed, and dragging languidly behind them are his obsessive-passions and musical aspirations. He also realizes one of the most important lessons of being human: that our accomplishments aren’t the entire cause of living. This felt like it should’ve been emphasized much more, instead of having to assume his epiphany from his expression. The emotion wasn’t in this scene, and I think what wasn’t communicated was intended for the next one:
Piano Joe in the “The Zone” Scene:
He returns home, depressed and deflated after his victory-turned-defeat. Silently at the piano, Joe realizes the moments of small but vivid reminders of life’s worth in a montage, some of them importantly not involving music. Interestingly, the first of the memories is when he’s a cat; 22 inhabiting his body and savoring New York’s favorable and sentimental quirks. The second batch are preciously chronological: receiving a bath as a baby, riding a bike through a park, watching fireworks from a rooftop, enjoying the beach with his mother, and playing piano for his elderly father. While these moments are heartfelt and appropriate in their insertion, I wish they’d been placed more meaningfully. Instead of, as the audience, feeling wistful with Joe, we witness his experience of wistfulness by not having experienced any of those moments with him — but, maybe we weren’t supposed to.
Immediately after realizing his life-long mistake, he is nudged to remember his “regular old living” comment toward 22. Encumbered by guilt, he begins to longingly play the piano and ascends into “the zone,” transforming back into a soul and greeted by Moonwind aboard his ship.
In my biggest contention with the film, this was lazy. It would be an excusable means of progression had the major difficulties of the film not centered on the protagonists narrowly seizing every opportunity to traverse the two worlds. It's the reason for 22’s accidental arrival on Earth through Joe’s body, and why Joe spent so long disastrously trailing her as a cat; it's the reason for the chaos in decision-making and sensitivity of time. It's what made Joe’s falling into and out of the spiritual world so compelling — for him to have easy access to this plane is defeating, and an inexcusable hole in the plot. Of course, he had to make amends with 22, but allowing him easy bridge into the metaphysical shouldn’t have been the answer.
It begs an interesting question: what if Joe never went back? What if, instead of redeeming the chance to make things right; instead of relieving the guilt of naivety; instead of the easy answer — what if he stayed on Earth, doomed to live with the intense regret and newfound, apologetic appreciation of life, projected onto his senses by a soul whose moment he’d robbed of the opportunity? This, I sense, would paint too realistic a picture of abject adulthood for a Pixar audience.
Ending:
So, in redemption, he miraculously arrives in the land of lost souls via piano-playing and finds 22 deranged with failure and lost for meaning. After a short chase, they share a disturbing moment: Joe is swallowed into 22’s intense nightmare of insecurity, characterized by a swarm of angry, monolithic representations of people from human history, screaming and admonishing her. The largest and most threatening among them is one of Joe, reminding her: “You’re never going to find your spark, there’s no point, those aren’t purposes you idiot … That's why you ruin everything, because you have no purpose!”
This whirlwind of anger and misery ends with Joe handing 22 the symbolic tree leaf that earlier spun into her hand, and in de-escalation, informs 22 that a “spark” isn’t “purpose” — it's only the green light to begin living, unattached to any hobby or passion. (He says: “...and the thing is, you’re pretty good at jazzing” — a word 22 makes up earlier for improvising through human conversations. Earlier, Joe shoots this down:
“First of all, jazzing isn’t a word. And second, music and life operate by very different rules.”
My biggest wish was that this metaphor was expanded: how the improvisational, sometimes irregular circumstances of jazz can act as a tool to understand the unexpected events of life.) The mayhem dissipates, and they stand together on the edge of the plummet to Earth.
When he hands back her Earth card, a questionable bit of calm dialogue occurs between them, 22:
“But Joe, this means you won’t get to … [keep on living],” Joe, smiling: “It’s ok. I already did. Now it’s your turn.”
At risk of sounding pretentious, it feels impractical for him to gladly relinquish his existence here. After earning a spot with Dorothea Williams (despite not experiencing the elation), witnessing souls in the stage before life at the bounds of the universe, tumbling through the existential ordeal of returning to Earth, vicariously commanding 22 while trapped in a cat’s body, finally to becoming a permanent fixture in Williams’ band while simultaneously learning he’d been missing the romance of existence and every moment worth relishing … These circumstances would set any character even further up the slope of choosing life, albeit acquired immorally. Despite being so heavily incentivized towards life, still, he chooses 22’s instead.
Together they descend to Earth. 22 is taken by her Earth card towards her destination, and in a flash, Joe is returned to the conveyor belt, slowly churning him towards the Great Beyond. He greets this with an accomplished smirk. Here, I paused and congratulated the writers on committing to Joe passing on — perhaps the strongest means of communicating the gravity of Joe’s decision, the fragility of life, and the certain consequence to a life regardless of achievement or circumstance. Then, it changed.
Embracing the Great Beyond, from behind we hear, “Mr. Gardner?” I braced for the impact of indecisive writing.
“Do you have a moment? I think I speak for all the Jerrys [universal workers] when I say thank you. We are in the business of inspiration Joe, but it's not often we find ourselves inspired … So we all decided to give you another chance. Hopefully, you will watch where you walk from now on.”
I felt every numerical review of the film, in these few seconds, fall several stories.
How could they have rewarded Joe? Whatever his implied fate beyond the conveyor belt would have surely been a more powerful and fruitful philosophical ending than having lazily been given a second chance. The permanence of his soul entering the Great Beyond without consolation would be committing to the film’s central theme: life’s on Earth’s inherent and delicate value. Instead, the ending appears ambivalent to every circumstance, and we are further separated from the useful appreciation of Joe’s sacrifice. Here, the film found a place to shed the bearings of finality, despite being largely about death — sacrificing their message for a quick, confusing, consulate romance.
In the final lines, he’s asked:
“So, what do you think you’ll do? How are you going to spend your life?” He answers, overwhelmed with their decision: “I’m not sure. But I do know … I’m gonna live every moment of it,” as he steps outside with a deep breath.
THE GOOD:
A Surprisingly Agnostic Film:
Perhaps a sign of a progressive, ever-secular society, Soul is surprisingly agnostic. It intentionally leaves the window of afterlife open for conversation, as well as the connection between human existence and a spiritual perspective. The protagonist enters an empty plane, emerging closer and closer to *the* unknown void — and while “The Great Beyond” urges us to consider there be something after life, Joe nonetheless remains terrified of anything before his mortal, human existence.
Another important facet of Soul’s agnostic appearance is “purpose” and “meaning” in the absence of religion. Souls are decorated with traits and quirks before arriving into existence, not having them imbued by an omnipotent endower. “Purpose” is left to personal discretion, as is “meaning,” assigning an equalizing agency to everyone, and avoiding the conundrum of deterministic inquiry.
What's even more surprising than a children’s film studio in serious existential contemplation or the absence of heaven and hell (or the absence of backlash), is not mentioning God in a movie whose secondary goal is to highlight its Black cast of characters and environments. Christianity — and maybe more importantly, ‘faith’ — is an important component to understanding Black culture and history. Maybe, on the writer’s part, it would’ve been better to question the nature of existence and afterlife without removing religion from the central community in the film whose religion is historically vital.
Protagonists & Selfish Displays:
Throughout the film, there is an interesting dynamic between preferred protagonists. Despite not having a solid footing of compassion toward Joe escaping the monotony of work for music, it builds gradually throughout the film as he navigates an unknown celestial world at the chance of returning to life. The push-and-pull of Joe and 22 as central characters with central motives might sometimes be confusing, but I enjoyed it.
I did also enjoy Joe’s often selfish approach to the film’s dilemmas. Joe’s selfishness not only stresses his seriousness in returning to life and pursuing music, but more importantly, the complexity of life and the inevitable heavy-handed decisions we make. Acting in your own interests is oftentimes necessary — although in Joe’s case, it might present you an outcome less favorable than imagined. Ultimately, doing what he could to return to his body and passions didn’t excuse his immoral means, and could’ve been avoided had he just dodged the open manhole cover.
While I enjoyed Soul, there are more than a significant number of places that — it should be examined for purpose. It harms the gravity of the film’s topic that several characters weren’t explored and engaged with, that several confrontations weren’t extended, and that the ending evaporated a lesson worth learning. With very small additions to these, the thesis of the film — and subsequently, their larger conversation about the human condition — would be fully realized, and whether naïve child or undetermined adult, it would strengthen an attempt at grasping life and our shared experience.