The new Pixar film "Soul" turned out to be an unexpected masterpiece on the meaning of life. It is a film that is a love letter for jazz ": this is how Pete Docter defined his masterpiece, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Film and Best Original Score.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
"It's a love letter for jazz": this is how Pete Docter defined his masterpiece "Soul - When a soul gets lost", which a few days won theOscar for Best Animated Film and for Best Original Score. The feature film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, was released on the 25th on the Disney + platform and from day one it received numerous acclaim from both audiences and critics, like most of the previous films. Pixar.
But “Soul” is much more than just an entertainment film for children, as it addresses a number of existential questions that are most common among adults.
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The plot and the message of "Soul"
The screenplay of the animated film directed by Pete Docter it was written by the director himself with Kemp Powers (co-director of the film) and Mike Jones. The protagonist of "Soul" is Joe Gardner, an African American music teacher living in New York who has always dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. Coincidentally, one day he is hired to replace a band's pianist and finally gets the chance to play in the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York to the Anti-World, a fantastic place where new souls acquire personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth. Intent on getting back to his life as soon as possible, Joe teams up with a precocious soul named 22 who never understood the appeal of the human experience. So, as Joe tries hard to show 22 the beauties of human life, he will finally be able to make sense of some of the most crucial questions about existence.
"Soul" is therefore an animated film that deals with the thorny theme of the meaning of life and that places the continuous search for inspiration to live (or rather the "spark"), otherness, the importance of emotions and the border between desire and obsession. And it does so in a poetic way, at times light, but never banal. But "Soul" is also a masterpiece that offers us a series of philosophy pills.
Soul is a contemporary myth about the life of the soul that sinks into ancient philosophy, passes from archetypal psychology and arrives at Jazz, 'music of the coming, music that creates', in the words of Amiri Baraka. And it is precisely on the coming that the film directed by Pete Docter focuses. - explains the philosopher and writer Andrea Colamedici, one of the creators of the cultural dissemination project Tlon - A philosophically crucial part of the film takes place, in fact, in the Ancient World (in the original Great Before), an intermediate kingdom placed between the Afterlife (the Other World in the film, in English Great Beyond) and life on Earth ( New York, specifically). It is a plane of reality in which souls train to incarnate in a human life, and are guided by a series of mentors, that is, people who have known how to live, in order to develop a personality and find their own spark. "
The genesis of "Soul" told by the director
The director of Soul, Pete Docter, is the same as "Inside Out" and "Up", an animated Pixar film loved by both audiences and critics. But unlike previous Pixar films, in which there was no lack of sentences and scenes aimed at adults, Docter's latest masterpiece seems to have a more ambitious goal and treat the main themes in a less "childish" and decidedly more complex way. On the occasion of the XNUMXth Rome Film Fest and the virtual meeting that preceded the delivery of the Lifetime Achievement Award he won as creative director of Pixar, Pete Docter explained the genesis of "Soul":
“Maybe this film was born as a result of my midlife crisis. I fell in love with animation at the age of eight, it became an obsession, but only after Inside Out did I feel fully satisfied with the result. We all repeat to ourselves that we have to pursue our passions to the end; Soul says that in some ways it is, but that life is even more complex. I know it seems absurd to deal with such themes in a family movie, but Pixar offers us the chance to do it in a fun way."
Jazz music stars in "Soul"
In the film directed by Docter, jazz plays a leading role. The original music bears the signature of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Atticus Ross.
“When Pete suggested we hire Trent and Atticus, it fascinated me: I realized this movie was taking a darker, more grown-up direction, and I liked the idea of exploring different sounds from what you usually hear in Pixar movies. - underlines the co-director Kemp Powers – Pete wanted to follow his instincts and he was absolutely right, especially to characterize this ethereal world, and even Trent and Atticus had to do something unusual: they didn't compose the music when the film was completed, but they offered us musical samples right from the start. start of processing. A bit like jazz, based a lot on improvisation. "
The main song of the soundtrack is “It’s all right”, originally composed by Curtis Mayfield and has become a classic of soul. The talented pianist Jon Batiste took care of arranging the new version of the song. The duet version of "It's All Right" with British singer Celeste was also digitally released as a single on December 18th.
The reactions of critics and spectators
The Pixar animated film was received with great enthusiasm by both audiences and film critics. On R (the famous site that collects reviews, information and news on the world of the seventh art and TV series), Soul has obtained the 97% positive reviews from journalists and 90% from the public. Thanks to the high score, the film also earned Certified Fresh status.
#PixarSoul is #CertifiedFresh at 97% on the #Tomatometer, with 187 reviews: https://t.co/vIC5vLHY0Q pic.twitter.com/MZwhJy6z0r
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) December 28, 2020
Also on the well-known US site Metacritic, the new Pixar animated film holds a very high score of 85 out of 100.
Every Pixar Movie, Ranked Worst to Best: https://t.co/68Zm8Eop4Q
#10 – Soul [85] now playing on Disney+ pic.twitter.com/1tVvKh8gQU
— metacritic (@metacritic) December 25, 2020
In short, "Soul" turned out to be an unexpected masterpiece and positively surprised all those who expected a fun and light animated film designed primarily for children. Could it be because it manages to dig deep into the human soul and reminds adults of the importance of keeping curiosity alive and rediscovering one's spark?
Source: Disney+/Movieplayer.com/Tlon
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