Soul (2020)

For a film that dares to call itself Soul, Pixar’s latest offering is running worryingly low on it. It’s always a difficult situation when the famed animation studio releases something new, only to reveal itself to not be quite what was promised. We’ve seen them disappoint almost as many times as we’ve seen them succeed wholeheartedly – and while Soul is certainly not a failure in any way, it is one of the rare occasions where the final product leaves so much to be desired, to the point where it becomes almost disconcerting to realize how much potential there was. Part of this comes from the fact that Pixar has become almost self-parodic, with the perpetual refrain of their modus operandi being that they structure their films around the premise of “giving ____ a personality”, with the blank being filled in by any living creature, inanimate object or, most recently, entirely abstract concepts. This worked (albeit to an extent) in many instances, and essentially defined them as a studio – but as we’ve seen in recent years, this has also been a significant reason to their gradual decline, and the takeover by more independently-minded studios, who produce works with just as much heart and passion, but without the vaguely pretentious sense of always succeeding, as has come to be expected by Pixar, who seem to be always banking on their name, allowing the quality of their output to slightly decline, even if they do indeed still make some solid films, of which Soul is one of them, just failing to hit the monumental heights of its predecessors, making it an enormously disappointing film, especially considering the wealth of potential embedded in this story, and the material that everyone had to work with in the creation of this entertaining, but otherwise unremarkable, piece of filmmaking.

Soul is certainly not anything close to a bad film, but its a far cry from the triumphs that we’ve seen come from the studio before, especially considering this is a film by Pete Docter, who is responsible for three of Pixar’s finest productions (Monsters, Inc., Up and Inside Out), so there was an additional sense that this would be yet another revelatory moment for a studio that seems to inspire passion like very few others in history. This is a film helmed by a veteran, written by an acclaimed young playwright who has already taken the theatre world by storm, and populated by a solid cast – so it stands to reason that Soul was supposed to be the kind of film that would very safely be yet another well-made, enduring classic. It is in this expectation that the film ultimately begins to stumble – it’s a film that plays it extraordinarily safe, not daring to take much of a risk, and instead going for something that would depend on audiences having their interest piqued by the premise, rather than allowing a grassroots campaign to emerge as the reason for its success (as was the case with films like Ratatouille, Up and Coco, which were films with a simple premise but a genuine delivery that made an enormous difference). Soul is a high-concept film that quite simply struggles to maintain the same energy throughout – and even those who are bullish on a film like Inside Out have to admit that the ambition balanced out with the heartfelt execution, making for a film that was both thought-provoking and extremely riveting. The same just can’t be said for Soul, which falls apart nearly as fast as it builds itself up, which is a genuine pity for a film that had so much promise in both theory and the tools it was given to execute it.

Discussing any film through the lens of its predecessors isn’t always the best approach, since it implies that art perpetually needs to be in conversation, and that one can’t stand independently of another. It is tempting to look at how Soul fails to realize some of the incredible ideas of previous Pixar films, but this is ultimately a standalone film that succeeds and fails on its own merits, rather than being dependent on anything else. It’s a decent way to look at this film, since many of its shortcomings come from within, just like the moments of incredibly striking beauty, which means that all conversation inevitably goes back to how this film came to conceive of high a conceptual storyline, and the various ways in which it let itself down, whether it be through the stunning animation being used as a crutch for the flailing story, or how it seems to abandon all hopes of spinning a simple, poetic narrative that centres on individuality and passion, in favour of a storyline that feels far more aligned with a steadily-growing canon of animated films that seem to be too concerned with expressing their own intelligence and originality, losing the rugged spark of magic that made these films so interesting in the first place. Films like Soul are already going to convince audiences to give them a chance, regardless of what material is contained within the film – so to lure us towards it, claiming itself to be a beautifully simple ode to life’s most intricate pleasures, only to give us something that is instead far more concerned with demonstrating its own intelligence than it is giving us valuable insights into the human condition, which Pixar has a tendency of doing through filtering incredibly resonant stories through the eyes of more unconventional protagonists, which this film just struggles to do.

Somehow, Soul manages to be simultaneously overly-convoluted and complicated, as well as hopelessly dull after a while, which is a deadly combination that no one could have predicted going into this film. There’s a tendency for the studio to rely on sequels in recent years, so there’s a degree of respect that goes to original and independent productions, which are normally the ones that have historically succeeded the most. Yet, Soul falls short of even the most basic criteria on a narrative level. It is a disconcerting thought to be both bored and confused by a film aimed at children, from inarguably the most prestigious studio working in the world of English-language animation, but Soul manages to do just that, and then even manage to add on a layer of misguided, overwrought sentimentality that feels entirely contradictory to the effortlessly cool, charming nature of the general premise. We normally tend to find films like this striking a very profound chord with viewers of all ages, through its humanistic and heartfelt approach to telling stories, where the stories plumb unprecedented emotional depths – Docter himself is responsible for the consensus choice for most heartbreaking moments in a Pixar film in both Up and Inside Out, so he certainly knows how to extract raw emotion from his films. Soul just falls short quite regularly, never quite reaching its full potential, outside of a few tender moments that just don’t add up to anything particularly memorable, leaving the bulk of the emotions to simmer for the entirety of the film, only coming to the fore right towards the end, by which point the story has become so tedious, they barely register beyond slightly tugging at the heartstrings, which is almost unforgivable for a film made by a studio known for their unique approach to expressing emotion.

The problem with Soul is that it is a film that exists better in concept – one can only imagine this is one of the many cases of a story coming into existence through a great one-line premise, with the rest of the film being built around it as a result – than it does in execution, and while the animation is undeniably stunning (some of the best Pixar has ever done), it is all for nought when we realize how little the film actually has to say – we know that they have the technical prowess and are constantly at the forefront of cutting edge animation, so its barely an achievement for them to make something beautiful, especially when the story around it feels so unconvincing and lifeless. It fails to hit any of the same emotional beats that we’ve come to expect from the studio – it’s almost parodic the extent to which they coast off the knowledge that audiences are going into their films expecting some degree of tear-jerking emotion. What we get instead is a beautifully-made film that is bordering on utterly tedious at times – it seems to have about half a dozen different plots sewn into it, almost as if the process of writing this film entailed taking a wide array of disparate ideas and throwing them together, hoping that weaving them together in such a way that we’re made to think it makes perfect sense, would help distract from the fact that none of these subplots really have much to say. Furthermore, the lack of strong emotion means that the tender moments don’t hit as hard as they normally would – we can often predict where the story is heading, and while this isn’t enough to discount the film (since it is following a particular narrative structure, after all), the combination of a narrative that goes in the same expected directions with the inability to infuse them with anything particularly resonant, makes it quite a dissatisfying experience.

Soul leaves so much to be desired, and tends to be quite lacklustre in some of the areas in which these films normally succeed without any hesitation. Characters are introduced that never quite make an impression (and the film will always have committed the ultimate cinematic sin, namely of having Angela Bassett in its cast, but still somehow finding a way to waste her astronomical talents – and that’s not even mentioning some of the other memorable actors that lend their voices to this film), and there are so many points in this story that are forgotten about, introduced into the narrative but rapidly forgotten about, without so much as a moment of resolution that would satisfy the numerous strands of narrative that inspired them in the first place. It was clearly built from a series of loosely-connected scenes than it is a single, coherent narrative, which gives the film a choppy, hasty feeling that never quite allows it to make any impression, since it is constantly in flux, oscillating between two different worlds in a way that is tonally jarring, and narratively confusing. Soul is a tricky film – it is undeniably gorgeous, and its heart is in the right place. Perhaps its a matter of it being a film that was slightly too ambitious for its own good, or simply just didn’t have the foresight to follow through on many audacious ideas – but whatever the reason, its a film that once again sees the studio depending too much on a common bag of tricks, and not doing too much to capture the renegade spark of magic that made them so unique in the first place. Soul may be disappointing, but it’s not without merit – it’s just that they’re a bit more difficult to find, and don’t add up to anything all that memorable in the end.