The other half of my soul at Make Believing wrote this really great piece about the themes of the Pixar film Soul. This is indicative of all the great work they do over there so if you like it please check out more on their site.
Joe
Soul is about a man named Joe Gardner, a middle school music teacher who has bigger dreams. He wants to be a professional jazz musician but recognizes it would be difficult and wouldn’t immediately guarantee him stability or financial security.
Then one day he sees that the famous jazz musician Dorothea Williams has an opening in her quartet, so he auditions. She is impressed with his playing so he will get to play with them for that night’s show. But then, very distracted, he abruptly falls down a manhole.
He finds himself in a purgatory of sorts but refuses to accept death. He wasn’t done on earth yet, he still had goals and dreams he was just about to fulfill! He leaps off the path leading towards the “Great Beyond.”
22
Then he finds himself in the “Great Before” or the place all souls live before they’re born on earth. He meets a stubborn soul called 22, who doesn’t find anything about earth interesting or worth living and dying there for. He gets mistaken to be a mentor and is put in charge of training 22. They make a deal to get Joe back home by using 22’s earth badge. But to do that they have to find her spark or what her passion on earth would be.
They visit a place called “the zone” where people get so lost in their passion that they enter a trance-like state, and their souls wind up here. Souls come and go as they should, but some lost souls never leave their passions turned obsessions and wander around endlessly.
There they meet Moonwind who can help Joe get back in touch with his body, currently in a coma. But instead, 22 gets put in Joe’s body and Joe’s soul gets put into the body of a therapy cat. Shenanigans ensue.
Through their adventures on earth, 22 discovers the little things that make living fun, and make existence not so bad. She gets to see what passion looks like.
Passion and Living Life
While I do find 22’s lack of passion and stubbornness to exist relatable, I really love what the movie has to say about people who know what they want and are determined to chase it. Joe has so much passion and so many expectations for what that should look like, that he doesn’t see what he’s already made of his life.
Dorothea says, “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 younger fish, ‘this is water. What I want is the ocean.’” She points out to him that he’s already made it, he’s already been enjoying life playing music and impacting others with his sound. He just got so excited by his own assumptions of what that would look like, that when he gets there, he doesn’t see it.
Dorothea calls Joe arrogant when he says he was meant to play. She’s telling him he is just meant to enjoy life. Playing is his passion, which is part of living, but that’s not all existence is.
His adventures in the body of a cat, watching 22 experience life for the first time, shows him that there were so many things he was missing, things he thought meant nothing or were just mundane parts of existence, but things that 22 found fascinating. It’s through 22 that he learns to slow down and really look around.
So…
The movie tells its audience that your life is what you make it. Regardless of whether your passion is eating food or playing piano, the only thing you’re meant to do on earth is enjoy existing. How you do that is up to you.
Make Believing is a collection of media analysis. It explores the deeper themes of films, tv shows, video games and more. It's a great place for people who love media and want a chance to appreciate it even more.
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