Content Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Pixar film Soul.
You know how there are some movies that upon your first time watching, you know they’ll change your life forever? Well, Pixar’s movie Soul was that for me. The first time I watched Soul was during lockdown in 2020. I was sitting on the couch with my aunt when we decided watching this movie would be a good and simple way to spend our evening. Little did I know, this film would quite literally give me the biggest emotional crisis and make me re-evaluate everything in my life.
Soul centers around a man named Joe Gardner, a pianist and middle school band teacher in New York City. He gets an opportunity to play alongside his longtime idol, Dorothea Williams. Unfortunately, he falls into a sewer and then into the “Great Before,” which is where souls are created before they’re dropped into Earth. He says he’s not ready to die because his “real life” hasn’t started yet. He believes it’ll start after he plays with Dorothea. To avoid death and try to get back to Earth, he mentors a soul named 22. 22 is infamously unwilling to start life on Earth because she’s incredibly uninterested in human life. After a few shenanigans, Joe and 22 end up on Earth, but 22 is in Joe’s body.
While navigating the city, 22 becomes interested in some of the smallest experiences in human life. She enjoys the taste of food, listening to live music, cloud gazing, and watching helicopter seeds fall. Joe sees this and understands that contrary to his initial belief, his life was worthwhile and beautiful before he got to play with Dorothea. At the end of the film, he gets a second chance at life and decides he’s going to “live every minute of it.”
As you can see, this film dives deep into some philosophical topics and makes you do a lot of thinking. Some people may not want to make their brains do a lot of work while watching a movie, and that’s completely valid. Since this is a family friendly movie, it’s a bit easier to comprehend these philosophical ideas with the fun story and dialogue.
There’s one quote specifically that I think really encapsulates the whole point of the movie. It goes as follows:
“I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, ‘I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.’ ‘The ocean,’ says the older fish, ‘That’s what you’re in right now.’ ‘This,’ says the young fish, ‘This is water. What I want is the ocean.’”
Doesn’t that make your brain do a flip or something? It’s such a clever way to communicate the message in a way that’s understandable for all audiences. When I first heard this, I had to take 20 steps back and re-evaluate my whole existence. It made me think about everything I had done in my life up until then, and I was able to start accepting my life as it was.
We all have dreams and goals we want to achieve in our lives. Those could be for your personal life, career, financial, etc. It’s common to feel like we’re just floating through every day until those goals are reached. Once we get that big thing we want, that’s when our lives will truly begin. However, that’s not true. Life is what we’re all living right now. Even if you think your life is mundane, it’s still beautiful and worth savoring. Don’t wait for your “real life” to start, because it already has.
Feature Image by Peri Oberman, via Canva
