It’s Pixar’s most visually inventive movie, and one of its most poignant.
Midway through Soul, our hero, Joe — or, sort of Joe, but you’ll have to watch the movie to know what I mean — is sitting in a barbershop, in desperate need of a haircut before a big make-or-break gig that night. Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a jazz pianist whose performance career has never really gotten off the ground; to make ends meet, he’s been teaching middle school band. But he’s confident that he was put on this earth to play jazz, and tonight’s gig might finally be his chance. Joe’s barber, Dez (voiced by Donnell Rawlings), is talking about his own life, something the pair have never really discussed before. Dez wanted to be a veterinarian when he was younger, following his discharge from the Navy. But his daughter got sick, and, as he says, “barber school is a lot cheaper than veterinarian school.” Joe is surprised — wasn’t Dez born to be a barber? Isn’t that his purpose? He’s great at it, and he seems to love it so much. “That’s too bad. Now you’re stuck as a barber, and you’re unhappy,” Joe says to Dez. But Dez tells him to slow his roll, because, as he says, he’s “happy as a clam” doing what he does. Sure, it wasn’t his dream to be a barber; he never felt like it was his “calling.” But he gets to talk to interesting people all day and make folks happy. Dez loves his life. And Joe leaves the shop with a lot to ponder. That’s the philosophical thesis of Soul, the latest Pixar film from director Pete Docter (Inside Out) and first-time Pixar collaborator Kemp Powers (who also wrote the terrific upcoming drama One Night in Miami). It is Pixar’s most imaginative and original venture in a long time, as well as its first with a Black protagonist and mostly Black characters, at least in its scenes set on earth. It bears some resemblance to other Pixar films — exploring meaning and purpose (Wall-E, Ratatouille) and the world beyond what our eyes can see (Coco, Inside Out) — while taking them in fresh, unexpected directions. And it’s a joy from start to finish. (If that’s enough info for you, bail out now and go watch the movie. If you’re okay with some mild plot spoilers, come with me.) But that barbershop scene serves as a distillation for the film because it’s not really Joe sitting in Dez’s chair. It’s 22 (voiced by Tina Fey), a soul who has been accidentally dropped into Joe’s body. Joe, meanwhile, is dwelling in the body of the cat sitting at 22’s feet. And the reason 22 and Dez are only now talking about Dez’s life, even though Dez has been cutting Joe’s hair for years, is that Joe only ever wants to talk about jazz.22, on the other hand, is truly new to the world — they’ve never lived on earth before. And they’re just discovering that life on earth, among people, is kind of cool and interesting, not the joyless slog they’d expected. Okay, so how did they get in those bodies? Honestly, I want to leave you the fun of finding out for yourself.
