SOUL. The Multilayered Nature of the Human Experience

In Soul, Joe Gardner, a middle-school music teacher stuck in the rut of a midlife crisis, suddenly gets an extraordinary chance to break free from his monotonous existence. He’s contacted by a former student, who invites him to audition as a pianist for the jazz band led by renowned saxophonist Dorothea Williams. Joe manages to win over the group’s leader, and the next day he is set to perform at the club, finally fulfilling the dream he’s had since his youth. He’ll prove to his mother that he truly has musical talent and, above all, give his life a new sense of purpose. He’ll gain a reason to get out of bed every morning, knowing there’s still something good waiting for him out there.

Unfortunately, just after leaving the audition—having finally gotten the chance at a breakthrough in his artistic career—Joe falls into an open manhole, ends up in the hospital, and his soul is transported to the afterlife, where he is to come face-to-face with his unexpected death. In his film, Pixar’s in-house director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up), once again tackles the multilayered nature of the human experience.

In the hit Inside Out, he focused on the human psyche, the mechanisms of memory, and the flow of emotional reactions. In Soul, he reaches for a similar narrative and structural framework (parallel worlds, translating abstract concepts into tangible form), but this time he tells a story about spirituality—about what defines us at our core: our interests, the foundations of our character, the skills and predispositions we develop.

Although finding parallels between Inside Out and Soul seems inevitable, the two animations are built on slightly different premises and achieve different results. This time, Docter relies on subtler stylistic tools and leaves the viewer with material that is less intriguing, raising fewer questions. The film lacks moments as richly layered as the farewell to Bing Bong in Inside Out, scenes where so much happens in the subtext—between the lines of what remains unspoken.

The most compelling idea in Soul is undoubtedly Docter’s perspective on death. It does not exist solely on a physical level; it also manifests in a person’s general outlook—mental stagnation, resignation, giving up. Even if every vital function is running perfectly, we can still be dead on the inside.

What drives Soul above all is Docter’s intuition, imagination, and sense of wonder. The afterlife is divided into two main realms: the queue for the Great Beyond and the You Seminar (the “Great Before”), where young souls are formed before they arrive on Earth. I believe we should have spent more time in these spaces—they ought to have been the “main course” of the entire project. Unfortunately, they remain insufficiently explored (humorously described using corporate terminology) and serve mainly as points of reference to the primary earthly storyline. That storyline, in turn, adheres to a familiar motivational-cinema formula, reminding us of the beauty and value of life, revealed even in its simplest, most mundane moments—like the taste of pizza or catching a leaf falling from a tree.

We’ve seen this before in It’s a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Docter operates in the same symbolic universe, but his variation on the theme feels somewhat conservative. Soul is, above all, a celebration of life—a reminder to squeeze the maximum out of each day and each minute. Sincere and lovely, yet in its own way derivative and overly familiar. Given its engagement with the ultimate questions of existence, Soul may at times come across as superficial, even slightly disengaging.

An emotionally moving finale is one of Pixar’s trademarks. Often—though not always (WALL-E, A Bug’s Life)—it crowns the studio’s finest works. Soul maintains a more subdued tone. Docter’s film is more likely to put the viewer in a contemplative mood than to provoke cathartic tears. It may not etch itself deeply into a cinephile’s memory, but it does prompt reflection on the choices we make in life. For many viewers, that alone will hold significant value.