Many years ago, my mother planned a trip to San Francisco with my grandfather, who was visiting from Brazil.
They took pictures in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and climbed the strenuous hills of the city. Then, she showed him the redwood trees in Northern California. He never forgot about that trip. He never forgot about that day in the forest. He kept talking about how lucky we all were, to be so close to those trees, copper-colored trees that shot up in the sky like ancient gods. He told us not to forget to look. It was a privilege, he said, to look. To stand outside, feet on the ground, and tilt your head up, breathing in the dirt and the air and the blueness of the sky.
I kept thinking about this memory after watching Soul (2020).
It’s a film that I have found myself ruminating over for days. However, it’s also a movie that I originally wasn’t entirely sure I would see.
Not only did Pixar’s latest fare, Onward (2020), disappoint me, but I had read a few early pieces condemning Soul for one of its biggest narrative twists. They rightly pointed out a glaring decision: the choice to physically reposition a Black lead into a brightly colored amorphous blob.
In the Daily Beast, Ernest Owens lambasted Disney for repeatedly facilitating the visual erasure of characters of color. Owen cited The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Brother Bear (2003), and, most notoriously, The Princess and the Frog (2009). In these films, Incan Emperor Kuzco transforms into a llama; Inuit lead Kenai turns into a bear; and Tiana, the first Black Disney princess, becomes a frog.
As Owens explained, “While representation matters, how such imagery of diverse characters is depicted in film matters even more. Black and brown people not only deserve audio representation in animated cinema, but full screen time in their complete bodies as well. To see characters of color on the big screen is to humanize them just like everyone else. I want to see them cry, laugh, and emote with darker complexions.”
At the same time, other writers have offered divergent perspectives, mapping their own personal experiences onto the film.
In Damon Young’s review, “Why Pixar’s Surprisingly Polarizing ‘Soul’ Is So, Well, Surprisingly Polarizing,” he acknowledged the criticism directed at Soul, but also delved into how deeply the film resonated with him.
Young wrote, “…[W]hen a piece of art shakes me like that, it has me hooked…[T]here’s the ‘middle-aged Black man choosing to pursue his passion instead of a safer vocation’ thing. And the ‘struggle to live in the moment and appreciate life instead of waiting for professional and artistic validations as proof of living’ thing. And these are my things!”
In a similar vein, while I do think that the depiction of the lead, Joe (Jamie Foxx), required greater forethought and narrative consistency, I also think that Soul shines as a meditation on what it means to sacrifice everything for creative passions—and how vital it is not to spend your whole life waiting for that “perfect job” before you actually start living.
This is an important, terribly difficult thing to remember.
Last spring, I graduated in the middle of a pandemic. Like so many others, I had to confront the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The fairy tale promises fed to me as a child—a house, a nice job, a retirement fund—dissipated like smoke. The conventional markers of success no longer seemed entirely attainable. And, without these alleged symbols of success, I felt adrift. Without external accomplishments, without cookies and gold stickers and medals and a gleaming job title in a swanky office building, how does one show that they have lived?
And then this film comes along. And I meet Joe: a middle-aged jazz musician striving, determinedly, to land a spot at a jazz club. He feels most himself when he plays the piano. In one of the film’s best scenes, Joe auditions for his dream job. When he first touches the black and white keys, he is unsure of what to do. But then, the music takes over and he performs a vibrant, luminous piece, the notes flying off his fingers, the air dark blue, the room shrinking to a perfect little space that fits only Joe and his piano. And Joe thinks, “Music is my life.” And we think, “Music is his life.” But, as the film carefully demonstrates, one thing can’t be everything. Not even your favorite dream. Not even your best day. Even more radical: You don’t need to have a “purpose” to be worthy of your own life. You can wake up, each day, and enjoy every single moment, regardless of whether or not you have fulfilled the expectations in your head.
In Dead Poets’ Society (1989), Robin Williams unleashes a fervent speech to his high school students, speaking to the dreamers and the artists and the quiet thinkers:
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for.”
While in graduate school, I teetered on the edge of burnout constantly. It felt like all of my energy, all of my artistic passion, had been drained from my body. So I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone. I chose oil painting as an elective.
Reader, I was not very good at oil painting.
But the drawing exercises in class revitalized me. I sat and drew and tried to make sense of the shapes in front of me. I sat and I drew and I reminded myself that progress was not linear, but looped like an elliptical orbit, lopped off the edges like a knife, leavened and then flattened like bread without yeast. Progress meant stops and spurts. Sometimes, the fog rolled over the sea and it seemed like I would never see the ocean again. But then, it pulled back. It left. And the waves burst onto the sand and touched my toes.
So I sat and drew and itched my nose and realized I had charcoal on my face and laughed when my friend Yeon laughed.
In Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz (2011), a character gently chastises the female protagonist for her reckless behavior. She tells her, “Life has a gap in it. It just does. You don’t go crazy trying to fill it.”
Progress is not linear. People are not linear. There will never be one lightbulb moment, a flash point that saves us from epic destruction. We have to remind ourselves to live in the quiet moments. Those subtle tides of happiness that swell around us when we don’t even notice.
Near the end of the film, Joe (well, Not-Joe, but that’s a convoluted plot point to unpack) sits outside on a front stoop in New York City. He stops, admiring the soft stillness outside: the lavender clouds, the gritty silver of city buildings, the sifting movement of amber light. People sleepily return home after a long day of work, men and women bobbing their heads to music during their late afternoon commute. A winged maple leaf drops from a tree—and Joe is utterly captivated. He watches, transfixed, as the golden leaf delicately floats in the air, falling at his feet. He picks it up in his hands and his expression says everything. Joe wants to bottle up this peace. Perhaps he feels something greater than himself, wringing his heart and leaving behind something bittersweet. He is content.
In the final scene of Soul, a character asks Joe, “How are you going to spend your life?”
Joe smiles. He says, “I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to live every minute of it.”
In high school, I had a bad day. I do not remember the details of this bad day, but I remember wearily sliding into the car. My mother glanced at me from the rearview mirror and saw my face. That afternoon, she drove down our favorite road, a slip of asphalt that stretched along the water, curling around the sand and the rocks. It was windy and cold and the waves unfurled quickly, running up and against the beach, before pulling back just as fast. I leaned out the car window, eyes closed. The sunlight beat against my face. I could taste the ocean salt on my lips. My mother cranked up the music, Elis Regina singing about rain and loneliness. And that happiness—that happiness that burned so bright and fast and strong—burned my chest, burned it so deeply that I could feel it like it was already a memory. And it became something bigger than happiness, a bright sort of grief and nostalgia for the moment, the person, that I was now. I just knew, I knew it in my bones, that I would never be like this again—there I was, gone, a new person already. I opened my eyes. And I breathed in the smell of the water.
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