Pixar’s Soul asks what a life is for, and it answers with jazz.
Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx, teaches music part-time at a New York City middle school. He wants to play piano professionally. When the school offers him a full-time teaching job, his mother Libba (Phylicia Rashād) pushes him to take it. Joe resists.
Then he auditions at a jazz club for a spot in Dorothea Williams’s quartet. Dorothea (Angela Bassett) is impressed and hires him for that night’s show. Walking away, distracted, Joe falls down an open manhole and falls into a coma.
That is the setup, and it arrives fast. Soul, directed by Pete Docter, who co-wrote it with Mike Jones and Kemp Powers, runs 101 minutes and spends most of them somewhere stranger than New York.
Trailer, via Pixar.
Joe Gardner and the Half Note Audition
The film opens in New York, where Joe teaches music part-time and dreams of playing jazz for a living. The full-time offer from the school is the safe path. Libba wants him to take it. Joe does not.
His break comes at a jazz club, where Dorothea Williams hears him play and hires him for that night’s show. He never makes the gig.
The Great Beyond and the Great Before
Joe’s soul is separated from his body following the accident, and heads into the Great Beyond. He refuses to go. He escapes and lands in the Great Before, also called the You Seminar, where new souls get ready for life on Earth.
Counselors named Jerry run the place. Every soul carries a badge that fills in with interests and personality traits. When the badge is complete, the soul can go to a newborn child.
Mistaken for a mentor, Joe gets assigned to 22, voiced by Tina Fey. 22 is cynical and has spent thousands of years in the Great Before. She wants nothing to do with Earth.
22, the Spark, and the Zone
Joe agrees to help 22 find her spark, which will complete her badge and enable Joe to use it to return home. He fails, repeatedly, to find her a passion.
They visit the Zone, where souls go when their passions put them in a euphoric trance. It is also a trap for obsessed, lost souls. There they meet Moonwind, a sign twirler voiced by Graham Norton, who enters the Zone to rescue lost souls. He helps the duo locate Joe’s soulless body in a hospital.
Joe returns to Earth and accidentally brings 22 along. They wake in Joe’s hospital room in the wrong bodies.
What the Cast Brings
Foxx is a classically trained pianist, and Docter called him perfect for Joe, citing his comedic skills and musical background. Foxx described the film’s feeling as the “bittersweet [feeling] of losing someone but gaining a vision of joy.”
Fey voiced 22 and also helped write her character’s lines. She called the film, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “helpful reminder that [life] isn’t defined by achievement or attainment.”
The cast list runs deep:
- Graham Norton as Moonwind
- Rachel House as Terry
- Alice Braga and Richard Ayoade as Counselor Jerry
- Phylicia Rashād as Libba Gardner
- Donnell Rawlings as Dez
- Questlove as Curly
- Angela Bassett as Dorothea
- Cora Champommier as Connie
- Margo Hall as Melba
Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Soul splits its music in two, and the split is the smartest decision in the film. Jon Batiste wrote the jazz compositions and his sessions were used as animation reference. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote the score.
| Element | Jon Batiste | Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross |
|---|---|---|
| What they wrote | Original jazz compositions | The film’s score |
| Where it lives | Joe’s playing, the club, New York | The Great Before, the Zone, the Beyond |
| Function | The sound of a life Joe wants | The sound of where souls wait |
The producers consulted jazz musicians including Herbie Hancock and Terri Lyne Carrington. That care shows in the club scenes, which move like someone actually listened to a rhythm section.
Four Years and a Pandemic
Docter conceived Soul in January 2016, thinking about where human personalities come from and the idea of determinism. At his first meeting with Jones, he pitched an idea about spacetime, souls and personalities.
Production lasted four years on an approximate $150-200 million budget. Soul is the first Pixar film to feature a black lead.
It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 11, 2020. It was scheduled for theatrical release on June 19 and November 20, then postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It went direct-to-streaming on Disney+.
Where Soul Lands
The mechanics are the weakest part. Badges, sparks, counselors all named Jerry, a Zone that doubles as a lost-soul trap — the film stacks rules on rules and then asks you to feel something about them. The middle stretch sags under its own invention.
What saves it is the pairing at the center. Joe wants to get back to Earth for one night’s show. 22 has had eons to decide Earth is not worth the trip. Foxx plays the desperation straight, and Fey plays the deflection without ever softening it into cuteness. When they end up in the wrong bodies, the film finally stops explaining its world and starts using it.
Libba urges Joe to accept the full-time job. Joe is resistant. The film gives both of them room, and it does not rush to settle the argument.
Soul is not Pixar’s tightest film. It is the one willing to sit with the question longer than most family movies dare, and that is worth more than a cleaner third act.
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