Soul

8/12 Haven’t seen this one since it won the Oscars it did, and omg 22 year old me has greater appreciation for it now than 17 year old me.  Pixar solidified its place at the top with this masterpiece. Despite what the people on r/boxoffice say about Pixar with their recent films (particularly Elio), I still hold them in high regard. This was just so perfectly realized. The amount of research into concepts of death and the abstract and the state of being ‘before’ really shows in the little lines of dialogue. I also loved their presentation of The Great Before and The Great Beyond; both would have been absolutely stunning in a cinema. I know I would have watched this in IMAX on June 2020, its original release date, if it wasn’t for the pandemic. Speaking of, it’s been four years since I last watched this. In the months this film occupied in the culture, I was heavily depressed, and I relied greatly on this film. That can be seen in my diary entries from 2020 (gosh I’m so happy I’ve been on Letterboxd since 2020; you can thank the pandemic for that).  I was only in grade eleven then. I’m a fourth-year college student now.  I’ve lived through so much in the past years. My 17 year old self and my 22 year old self would be mostly unrecognizable to each other, except for one thing they’d see in each other. My love for the arts. The obsession with film goes way, way back. Same goes for books and writing. My obsession with theatre was fairly recent.  All my life, I’ve been waiting ‘to make it.’ I anticipated that moment to be something so big, there would be fireworks, the joy from me is something very difficult to express. Then after that, I would just be coasting off of it, with nothing to do, because I’ve finally ‘made it.’ I guess my acceptance to my university’s publication was when I finally ‘made it.’ I was trying on clothes at Power Plant’s Zara, then when my mom was paying for the one shirt I liked, I opened my messages, and saw my friend Emman’s message, saying “nakapasa ka sa varsiii !!!” with a link attached. The link led to the Varsitarian’s announcement of accepted applicants. I’ve never felt so ecstatic in my life until then. The Varsitarian has always seemed so elusive to me, until that moment that validated and justified everything I did until then. Mind you, I was a reject from The Flame, my college’s publication, in my freshman year. I’ve also longed to be a writer. I am now writing reviews of plays by Sandbox, Repertory, and Tanghalang Pilipino, and all the other groups that are too many to mention. Revenge theatre is real.  Until this film, I did not think I’ve ‘made it’ yet. But this rewatch of Soul made me realize that ‘making it’ is just a concept, and that it’s all downhill from that peak we think of.  Dorothea Williams, the bigwig in this film, tells Joe Gardner a story of a fish. The fish is swimming in water, and he’s looking for the ocean, until someone tells him he’s already in it.  I don’t think I understood it when I was 17. But having lived life in the past years, I finally understood it, because I went through what Joe did. I was still hustling, only to realize that I’ve finally realized my dream to become a writer. In fact, I have two sections at the Varsitarian, and the norm there is only one section. In fact, I’ve written reviews for companies whose plays before I used to pay for (not that I don’t mind. Most of their plays I liked at the very least anyway). I now know I have found the ocean, and I am finally in it.  What’s important now is to realize that ‘making it’ is a concept, and it’s all downhill from there. You cannot just coast off of one instance that proves you ‘made it.’ It’s something you have to regularly maintain. And when you do ‘make it,’ the exhilaration is temporary. If you want to feel it again, you have to hustle again. I also cried at two scenes here: the scene where Epiphany from the score plays, and the scene of 22 on her way to Earth. Those were very effective tearjerkers, damn. Pixar, I revere you so very much. The smaller things in life are what makes life life. It’s not your aspirations, but the things you do in the day to day.  I guess what I want to take away from this film is that once you learn to appreciate the smaller, finer things in life, you will have finally made it. Thank you for this film, Pixar.