Film Name: 心灵奇旅 / Soul
“I’m glad to be born.” I couldn’t help but feel this way after watching Soul.
The most moving movie of 2020 has finally come to life, and the 100% Rotten Tomatoes opening is not an exaggeration. This animation, with its excellent setting and deep emotions, is really a good work that can achieve “zero bad reviews”.
You may think the movie is too rich to fully appreciate, or you may feel that the movie isn’t entertaining enough to be slightly puritanical …… But once you’ve enjoyed the movie with a little bit of care and attention, you can’t deny the craftsmanship and excellence of Soul.
It’s one of the best Pixar animated movies ever made, and it’s the best Pixar ever made.
[Friendly reminder: there will be in-depth spoilers below, so read at your discretion].
Full marks for creativity and design
Watching Pixar’s work, I would add an extra criterion of unusual attention to the evaluation, creativity.
This is a habit that Pixar animation has slowly developed for me over the years, and I always marvel at the whimsicality of its presentations: the toy world that is independent and dependent on humans for survival in Toy Story, the monster factory that generates electricity from children’s screams and laughter in Monsters, Inc. The life of a flying house where you strap on a balloon and run into the sky in “Up”, and the brain system where emotions and memories dominate personality expression in “Inside Out”. ……
“Coincidentally, Pete Doggett, the director and writer of Soul, was involved in all of the above classics and directed the Monsters, House of Flying and Mind movies – and, by the way, is the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar Animation Studios, the top Pixar name. Properly Pixar’s top card.
Soul is one of Pixar’s best works in terms of creative setting alone, and its design of the “world of souls” was fresh and ingenious to me.
At the beginning of the movie, the main character Joey’s struggle at the time of death is very understandable in our historical and cultural context, that is, after walking on the Yellow Springs Road and the Naiho Bridge, he is unwilling to drink Mengbo Soup, and according to the theory, a soul with such a deep obsession will easily be transformed into a ghost, but as a result, he accidentally fell into another space. …… The next stage is the creative explosion of the Soul The next stage is “Soul”, which is a concentrated burst of creativity.
The film doesn’t delve into how people die (“The Other Side of Life” is a passing reference), but rather envisions how their souls come to be (“Where They Come From” is colorful).
Doggett’s trademark imagination is fully reflected in the film, such as Joey’s fall from the “Bridge to Nowhere,” which takes on different forms in different screen presentations, including a black-and-white color scheme with a single line, while the truly breathtaking highlight is not “the Great Before” (the Great Before), but rather “the Great After” (the Great Before), which is a sequence in which the human soul is conceived of in a colorful way. The real showstopper is the design of “the Great Before”.
This is a place dedicated to the preparation of the “soul babies” who will become human beings (the movie does not say whether there are past lives or reincarnations of souls), and all the scenes and characters look a bit “fuzzy”.
All the things in Birthright are very soft, even a little ethereal, with very light, soft, low-saturation colors, which undoubtedly matches our imagination of the world of souls: souls that can be perfectly integrated into the world without disappearing completely.
With Pixar’s strong technical support, the world is full of softness and softness, with grass-like floors, translucent and colorless buildings, and a multitude of light and ethereal soul babies – everything is déjà vu, but only when you interact with it will the colors appear clearly.
Particularly noteworthy are the Mind Academy’s threadlike counselors, the Jerries, which are pure cosmic energies existing in higher dimensions, pseudo-2D animations created using 3D methods, and are unusually ethereal in both image design and mannerisms, and can be described as characters that defy logical common sense yet are full of charismatic fun.
While the creators are doing addition behind the scenes, they are trying to do subtraction on the screen, and restraint is more important than fancy when presenting new things – the world of Birthright is simple, abstract, and beautiful, presenting an effect of weightlessness.
The baby souls are randomly assigned different personalities and other attributes by the Jerrys, and then through the guidance of their mentors, they are given the all-important “spark”.
The setting of the spiritual mentors is very interesting, they are all big names in human history, such as Archimedes, Lincoln, etc., similar to the reputation of the never-ending Ying Ling, they can choose to stay in the School of the Mind after death to continue to contribute their wisdom, to guide the baby souls to find their own spark, as long as the completion of this step, the babies will be able to get the “pass”! As soon as this step is completed, the babies can get a “pass” to reincarnate on Earth.
At the same time, another piece of “gray area” at the border between the place of birth and the earth is also very cleverly designed, that is, the “realm of forgetfulness” where the free soul is located.
People on earth who are intoxicated with themselves and have entered the realm of forgetfulness will unconsciously go out of their souls and enter this space, and some especially powerful meditation masters can even act on their own in it, such as the billboard displayer Moonwind in Manhattan, who is totally devoted to his work.
If you suddenly run out of notes when you’re playing in a drunken stupor, or forget your words when you’re giving an emotional speech, it’s likely that someone in the realm of forgetfulness has interrupted you ……
Although the ability to enter this other dimension is a sign of one’s energy and concentration, if one is too paranoid and lets one’s consciousness detach from the real world, the soul will be transformed into a dusty gray spirit body, wandering blindly in the realm of oblivion with its obsession.
The “spark” and the “gray body” are the most important core settings in the world of birth and oblivion, respectively, and they are directly related to the standard of the film’s story, and Soul proves the basic principle of “technology in the service of story”. Soul proves the basic principle of “technology in the service of story”.
A Story with a Twist
The plot of Soul is simple: Joey Gauntner, a depressed middle school music teacher with a passion for jazz and a dream of becoming a professional piano player, feels he has reached the pinnacle of his life when he is offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform onstage with renowned jazz legend Dorsia.
The man who had nothing else in his sights was killed in an accident, but his obsession with his dream led him to the “place where he came from” by mistake.
Joey is one of those ordinary people with high aspirations and over-ambition, who sees all his life as a “temporary transition” until he finds a full-time music gig, and immerses himself firmly in his music world, only to end up in an ironic situation where his heart is higher than the sky and his life is thinner than paper.
On the other hand, “Twenty-Two”, the nail in the coffin of the Spiritual Academy, is the polar opposite. She is not interested in life on earth at all, and has never been able to find her own spark, and the many spiritual mentors are at their wits’ end with this precocious baby soul.
The meeting of the two souls is not as simple as a story of “brainless and unhappy”, but represents the collision of two different life concepts, which gradually merge in friction and understanding, and ultimately sublimation.
Joey, who is eager to be resurrected, wants to help Twenty-two to obtain the pass to return to Earth, while Twenty-two, who is used to seeing the lives of great men, is interested in Joey’s mediocre and “failed” life – the former has a very strong purpose, while the latter does not have a purpose at all, and the two of them, out of their respective characteristics, develop a relationship. The two of them have a basis for coming together out of their respective identities …… but this is not enough for them to change themselves.
Interestingly, the real opportunity for both to change their views is an unexpected experience: bringing Twenty-Two back to life and Joey back from the dead.
To be more precise, twenty-two “souls” into the body of Joey, as his identity to experience a day in New York, while Joey possessed the cat, as a spectator, to re-perceive his own life.
Joey is too obsessed with his own dreams, which leads him to be a bit over-ambitious in life, ignoring the insignificant but precious things around him, such as his mother’s love full of nagging and concern, and his boring but surprising teaching, etc. The most symbolic part of the story has to be the cat.
The most symbolic point is Joey’s new understanding of his barber buddy: he had always thought that this old acquaintance was a born shaver, good at his craft, warm and good at listening, until twenty-two helped open the box, he realized that the other party’s ideal was once to be a veterinarian, and was dragged by other factors “dragged” by the choice to barber for a living! He was dragged down by other factors and chose to make a living as a barber.
In Joey’s opinion, everyone should have clear ideals and goals, and if they can’t be realized or worked towards, a person should teabag and sit down, and the true state of mind of his barber buddy was a rude shock to him – and the reason why Joey was oblivious to this was because he spent the vast majority of his time talking about jazz, the He doesn’t have the urge to get to know people.
But these “bystander” realizations didn’t shake Joey’s resolve to play.
What was even more rewarding was that twenty-two became less afraid – yes, when she saw other souls go to Earth, deep down she inevitably thought that there was something wrong with her, so she became cynical and took pleasure in it, adding to her negative sense of “disinterest and rejection of everything”, and this was all part of the process. She became cynical and took pleasure in it, increasing her negative sense of “disinterest and rejection of everything”, all because of her inexplicable fear.
Taking the opportunity to experience being human without being reincarnated, Twenty-Two gets her first tangible taste of life (a feeling she could never have experienced at Birthright), and for the first time, she begins to think that being human isn’t as scary/bad as she thought it would be. …… However, Twenty-Two’s choice to steal Joy’s body in order to continue her own marvelous experience pushes Joy into a corner, and this leads directly to an even greater mental block for her.
By the time Joey gets what she wants and comes to her senses, Twenty-two has become a “gray spirit” that resists everything – there’s never been a precedent of a baby soul being controlled by an obsession, which means that Twenty-two has established a real relationship with the earth, and because she’s attached to it, that’s why she has a real relationship with it. Because of the attachment, it is lost.
Back to the initial question: what is the Spark?
Many people, including Joey, think that it is the goal or ideal of life, and those spiritual teachers were also caught in this “stereotyped thinking” before they could not teach twenty-two …… In fact, the so-called find the spark, just to let the soul babies feel any hint of the joy of life. The so-called finding the spark is just to let the soul babies feel any hint of the joy of life, playing a little soccer, baking, shooting a rocket, etc., anything even just swinging on a swing.
Twenty-two’s journey to get the spark reflects the importance of “physical and spiritual unity”, and the risk of deviation in theory without practice.
The “unexpected journey” of Joey and Twenty-two teaches the all-knowing Jerrys a good lesson that there are still countless possibilities to be learned outside of all known rules and worlds.
Life’s infinite splendor
Soul is so successful in creating the virtual world “Where Life Comes From” that many viewers don’t realize that there is a New York City in the film that is real enough to make it look real.
New York City is the jazz capital and cultural center of the United States, and its rich, diverse, fast-paced, and vibrant backdrop is perfect for telling the film’s story, and if you know anything about its distinctive cultural background (including the fact that Jamie Foxx, the voice of Joey, played American jazz legend Ray Charles in the 2004 film Ray, which won him an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor), you’ll have a good idea of what “Soul” has to offer. Actor), there will be an added layer of admiration for Soul.
After realizing his dream, Joey found that he was not as excited as he thought he was, so he re-examined his life and life in the past, and he began to realize that he had thought that he was seeking a piece of living water but could not get it, in fact, he had already been in the middle of the whole ocean.
The meaning of life lies not only in the black-and-white keys on the stage, but also in the bite of a pizza when you’re hungry, a lollipop when you’re free, a tube of knitting yarn when you feel your mother’s scolding and love, and even a falling leaf when you’re gazing at an autumn leaf. …… With this awakening, Joey reached the highest level of jazz in a sense: free from the constraints of rules, spontaneous, and free to play his heart out. He is a jazz musician in the highest sense of the word: free of rules, spontaneous and spontaneous, and playing music full of infinite notes.
This is very much in line with one of my personal views: if you want to create something extraordinary, you must first accept your own ordinariness, because no one is destined to be born extraordinary.
There are many “Joes” in life, but I think there are more “Twenty-two’s” around us, who have never been able to find a clear goal, but still manage to live a colorful life.
Thanks to “Soul”, which contributed the warmest joy in this winter, it not only let me understand that “a great life is born from the ordinary”, but also let me believe that “an ordinary life itself is a kind of greatness”.
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