Its Black characters are beautifully rendered to look like real people, and I don’t recall any caricatures in sight. The foremost strength of Soul is its breathtaking animation. After all, there should be no doubt that Docter, the creator of Monsters Inc (2001), Up (2013) and Inside Out (2015), knows how to tell a story. Ultimately, Soul’s central questions are: “What makes all this living worth dying for?” “What makes you, you?” and “What are we searching for in life, and who can help us find it?” The Good: “Joe Gardner, where have you been?” -Dorotheaīefore discussing the pitfalls of Soul, it must be acknowledged that this film does a lot right.
Along the way, Joe and 22 teach each other the meaning of life and discover more about the people in his life from his barber, Dez (Donnell Rawlings) to his mother, Libba’s (Phylicia Rashad), apprehension over his musical aspirations. 22’s been missing for over a thousand years despite being mentored by some of George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and many other legends in the afterlife.įrom there, the film focuses on the race to get back to Earth in time for the concert. There, he meets the second-lead, 22 (Tina Fey), a delinquent soul who can’t find her “spark,” the requisite for a soul to become a human being. He jumps off the spiritual bridge and lands in “The Great Before,” the place where souls exist before they become human.
While other souls accept their fate, Joe takes control of his own destiny. Joe ends up on a long staircase to an all-encompassing life, a clear metaphor for the afterlife.
He dazzles in the audition and is told to return that night for the show, but on the way out, he dies. He catches a big break when former student Curley (Questlove) invites him to play with Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), a big-time saxophonist. Soul is set in New York City and focuses on Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a jazz pianist who longs to perform on stage but is stuck teaching middle school band. So was Disney’s Christmas present a re-wrapping of old ideas or a fresh direction for the studio? Or, as Uncle Ben would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.”ĭisney-Pixar’s latest film, Soul, directed by Pete Docter, presents an opportunity to wrestle with that history because it’s the first Disney film to feature a black lead since Princess and The Frog in 2009. They identify with the cutely drawn characters on screen and carry the ideas presented, explicitly or subliminally, into adulthood. This history of racism from Disney matters because it can have a large influence on children’s perception of the world.
0 kommentar(er)
