There will be spoilers in this review but that’s frankly because you can’t talk about Soul without talking about the big lesson that gets landed at the end. Soul follows Jamie Foxx’s Joe Gardner, an unsatisfied music teacher who finally gets his big break to play jazz live with celebrated star Dorothea Williams. Unfortunately, he falls in a manhole and his soul is transported to another dimension, where he has to confront the fact that his next step may be to the “Great Beyond”.

Here’s where the spoiler-y parts start. Joe finds a way to escape going into the Great Beyond and instead lands in the Great Before, where he pretends to be a instructor to “22”, a soul that doesn’t want to be born. This sets up the running joke for the film – Joe is a soul that doesn’t want to die and 22 is a soul that doesn’t warn to be born, and yet their lives are intertwined.

What I enjoyed about the concept of the film was that the concept of the afterlife isn’t actually treated very seriously. The ethereal beings, mostly known as Jerry, are abstractly drawn and the environments in the Great Beyond and Before are mostly simplistic (with some deviations e.g. the room of everything). Rather, the focus is kept to Joe and 22 as they explore why they want (or do not want) to live. There are a couple of amazing side-quests and distractions that actually add texture to the understanding of the soul, whether it’s talking about “the zone” or learning about being in a trance.

The kicker comes right at the end as Joe realizes that life isn’t about finding your “purpose”. Rather, your spark, the last ingredient for 22 to get born, is what makes you want to wake up every day and live life, with the good and the bad. The concept of purpose, a rather existentialist notion, is projected by us onto ourselves and others. Of course, this opens up a philosophical question that will invite commentary from Nietzsche, Sartre and Kierkegaard but in the context of Soul, it is a welcome reminder of how we have to find satisfaction in the very act of living. It is a critique of all the dogmas that instruct you to find your meaning in life, even at the risk of your own sanity. This paradigm also creates space for those who are not ambitious but simply value spending time with family or in nature. The spark is what encourages us to live, but it is not what we are born for.

I enjoyed that insight. I’ll definitely carry it with me moving forward.

All in all, here are my ratings for the movie:

Cinematography: 4/5

Screenwriting: 5/5

Musical Score: 4/5

Acting/ Performance: 4/5

Overall: 4.25/5