Soul

When talking about how people don’t take animation seriously, it should be considered a capital crime to exclude this movie from the conversation, intentionally or not. After all, it is the best movie of 2020. It has, of course, all the great traits that animated movies usually come with – an interesting premise, lovable characters, very funny moments… It’s also got the heartwarming and tearjerking ones that truly great animations have been giving us for ages. But it is in the soul of these emotional parts where the true beauty of this movie resides. To live every minute of life. A simple message. And not a groundbreaking one, as it has been previously done by Adam Sandler in Click, to cite one example. However, done with such grace, uniqueness and beauty that I can’t help but feel like it is completely anew to me. Soul talks about the meaning of life, humanity’s obsession with purpose, the expectations that the world around us forces everyone to create, the bonds that we make here, valuing the mundane and mediocre things and seeing their true beauty… I must once again resort to not putting a period because, same as life, I simply can’t make it that final. Like the list of things worth contemplating and being mesmerized by, there are just too many more themes encompassed in this movie. Some are just too small for us to notice right away. Tina Fey’s discouraged 22 can’t find a reason to live for because, on paper, life is stupid. Why would we go through so much suffering and boredom just for tiny moments of happiness and euphoria here and there? Only someone who has never felt sunshine’s sweet kiss on the cheek along with the caress of the breeze that lifts the fallen leaves off the ground would say that. You have dishes to wash, assignments to write and you’re lacking sleep, but suddenly the sun is getting low, the grass is warm and you’re… okay. The tiredness just turns to sweet numbness, and you feel like you could fall asleep on the earth so she can take you back in and turn you into the stardust you once were. Then that moment’s gone. Until you find it again in the creases of a dress, the dust floating in a ray of sun in your attic, the light passing through an aquarium and making patterns on the ground or the waves of the great big ocean. No one can ever know what the sea truly feels like until they dive in. There are far too many reasons why we should stay away from it, but no rationalization can trump the pure feeling of having all that water around you and the inexplicable peace and joy it can bring. What 22 shows us is that we’ve been swimming in it for so long that we have forgotten what it’s like to be out of it. All we need is to be reminded of that. That even when we can’t reach the shores we wish we could, the sun is still shining, the trees in the islands are still green, the sky's still blue and the water is just as wonderful as the day we first fell in it. And Joe comes to that realization in the most human and beautiful way possible. He needed help from his cheerful barber, his discouraged yet passionate student, stern yet caring mom, and, most of all, his once careless now full of life companion, but he got there. And he did it to the sound of one of the most beautiful scores ever written for a film. Soul is visually amazing, but it comes nothing close to what Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and, most importantly, Jon Batiste accomplished with their music. This is a symphony of life accompanying an ode to life. They went deep in the zone in order to make this and took us all along for the ride. I, for one, am eternally grateful to them for this voyage. Unfortunately, I don’t think Soul’s message is as universal as that of Past Lives, but it spoke to such a deep part of me that I simply cannot deny it a spot in my list of favorite movies of all time. Especially considering how much it makes me cry like a newborn every time. I just know that if everyone could every once in a while be reminded of Joe’s and 22’s discoveries, the world would be a better place.