NOT TRYING TO BE DEBBIE DOWNER. I just had this weird feeling that wouldn’t go away, so I dug deeper.
This is about trying to be an ally who actually cares to read deeper into the way Hollywood offers up stories about black lives. So this isn’t a challenge of your enjoyment of the film, it’s a challenge of my enjoyment of the film and feeling something was off. In this year, I’m more attuned to it than ever, obvs. If you don’t want your happy whiteness challenged about the movie “Soul”, don’t read this. Essentially, it’s an insensitive and weird bizarro-world form of Get Out, and ends up an uncomfortable white savior story that fully marginalizes a black man, his dreams, and his self worth. It’s a “swap narrative”, and it’s really bad.
I didn’t know why I hated it after watching it (doing that “Oh everyone enjoyed it so I am sure i did too), then proceeded to ignore it as a “I am an idiot” moment that I have about 4 or 5 times a day. But the plot was vacuous, the storyline meant nothing… and the pseudo-religious metaphysical subplots were just absurd. I hated that immediately. The movie is fun to look at tho. But it’s like Damon Lindelof level nonsense to use macguffins and unanswerable questions to appear “deep and smart”.
So.. I don’t like when I feel way off from the zeitgeist, and researched it a bit.
Black reviewers did not warm to it like white reviewers.
This is the must read if you choose not to ignore the complexity and just want to watch a dumb cartoon. It’s not an indictment on your belief systems or morals to just want to watch a movie and forgo the process of assimilating that pop culture into your own existence, but it’s a useful tool to realize no movie is an island, and both what made it and its impact fit into the overall world of culture, and then has an impact on said culture. So if you read one review, read this one: —>
“it betrays the black antagonist for white good”
https://www.polygon.com/movies/2021/1/24/22246929/pixar-soul-black-character-22-passing-narrative
and mentions this other review:
In his review, critic Kambole Campbell compares Soul to another recent movie about the theft of Black bodies: “In a decade of film where Jordan Peele’s Get Out became part of our cultural lexicon, it makes one wonder why someone didn’t think through the plot device of a character voiced by a white actress piloting a Black man’s body. With all the film’s canniness about Black living, to see such a moment completely divorced from any kind of political thought feels completely bizarre and somewhat infuriating in how easily it could have been avoided.”
Another reviewer, African American Woman:
Once again, Black audiences would have to deal with seeing a Black character not experience life through their body. In a year in which more attention has been paid to Black death than ever before, Soul‘s adherence to yet another unnecessary Black out-of-body experience becomes even more tonally dissonant than it was before. https://colorwebmag.com/2020/12/28/mo-reviews-soul-disney-pixar/
White critics didn’t like it as well…. and although not as nuanced, I feel like they represent my white privileged and naivety born ignorance, and the way a white person can feel the film is “off”, without being able to describe it because we do not possess the experience of what it means to be black in America. Whatever the case, these are great and incisive, even if Martin’s queries are less than specific about what he didn’t enjoy.
Boston https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/12/25/soul-has-tuneful-appeal-just-dont-think-about-the-plot/
Time https://time.com/5923340/soul-review-pixar/
Leonard Maltin – https://leonardmaltin.com/soul-tackles-the-big-questions/
But, if you read anything other than the first linked review, read this gents thoughts on why the script and plot were just broken nonsense…
“pixar’s biggest miscalculation”: https://www.mattpais.com/movie-reviews/2020/12/11/soul-review
The movie removes parenting and life experience from the concept of personality and offensively implies — in this year of all years — that those who don’t survive near-death experiences pass away because of a lack of inspiration or determination.
Seriously, it’s astonishing how many mixed/terrible messages occur in this underwritten, manipulative story of an unappreciated musical genius who also needs to focus less on his art:
- People need to live fully but only in a particular way, finding their creative motivation but not letting it dominate your life
- People who give everything to their craft are limiting themselves but are also top choices to be mentors to others
- Learn from that genius mentor but don’t try too hard to follow in their footsteps
- Joe is selfish and one-dimensional but worthy of afterlife validation yet also living incorrectly but also just needs to have more childlike wonder
- Souls need bodies to appreciate tastes and smells but not sounds
- No other souls feel it’s not their time to go, as if Joe’s the only one feeling like he wants more before he dies
- People receive “complete personalities” before birth that are a result of randomly assigned characteristics having nothing to do with DNA but also Joe thought he hated jazz until his dad brought him to a particular show
- Being “in the zone” is beautiful and ideal but also don’t try to do that too much or care too much because that’s an “obsession” that takes you away from life, as if that passion isn’t part of your life
- Joe’s determination to live inspires 22 to see the value in life even though Joe’s priorities are deemed inappropriate and foolish
- Joe is likable and kind but is also a total loner in his 40s who is dangerously fixated on his career and can’t believe someone is happy without having their dream job
- Be inspired and live every minute, but not too much, and not like that
