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Director: Pete Docter
Release date: October 11, 2020
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
From the 2010s on Pixar’s output became very erratic. Excellent films became rarer, and too much of their output was just okay or even subpar. That said, the studio’s summits were still higher than anything in American studio animation around it, as ‘Soul’ for example proves.
What sets Pixar apart from all other American animation studios is its will to tackle more profound life questions, and not just the tired ‘importance of family’ trope that floods Disney films or the ‘believe in yourself’ message that has become the stale message of almost any American animation film around. No, ‘Soul’ ticks nothing less than the question of what it means to be alive and does so in a surprisingly subtle way, never laying the moral too thick.
‘Soul’ tells about Joe Gardner (a wonderful Jamie Foxx), an aspiring jazz pianist in New York, who finds himself teaching jazz to untalented school children and still depending on his mother, while he still longs for a breakthrough, despite being past his prime. Then opportunity knocks…
‘Soul’ is one of those extremely rare animation films starring African American people, and like the great predecessor in this respect, ‘The Princess and the Frog’ (2009), we see the black protagonist change into another shape for quite a while, because for a substantial part of the movie we watch ‘Joe Gardner’ wander ‘the great before’ in his spirit form. One almost starts to wonder if the American studios don’t dare to make their audiences watch black characters for too long. But luckily, we quite quickly return to New York and to its black community. I love how the film is about blacks without being about being black. The film also stars a very strong (and not totally sympathetic) female star saxophone player called Dorothea Williams, and jazz indeed plays an important part in the feature, even if the film isn’t about jazz, or music, at all.
For in ‘the great before’ Joe meets ‘22’, a soul terrified of life, and dodging being born for centuries. ‘22’ (greatly voiced by Tina Fey) simply refuses being born, and she isn’t able either, because she hasn’t found her spark, yet. It’s up to Joe to find it with her, otherwise he’ll never return to Earth.
The before-life scenes belong to the great world building sequences of any fantasy film. The new souls, for example, are guided by weird two-dimensional beings, all called ‘Jerry’, who look like they’ve walked away from a Picasso painting. There’s nothing of ‘this world is actually like contemporary America’, like that of ‘Monsters, Inc.’, ‘Cars’ or ‘Onward’. Even the colorful afterlife in ‘Coco’ looks rather mundane compared to this place, with its clear 1950s cartoon modern designs and strange surroundings.
‘Soul’ knows a wonderful plot with many surprise turns and unexpected twists and certainly entertains to the very end. The only very weak spot is Joe’s all too easy return to the other world in the end. This return was clearly needed for the plot, but the sequence feels forced and fails to convince, unfortunately breaking the suspense of disbelief. Nonetheless, the film certainly shows what it means to be alive, and there are sequences of great beauty and deep emotion, given to us in subtle doses and understated character animation. In all, ‘Soul’ belongs to the best animation film can offer, and it is arguably the first animated masterpiece of the new decade.
Watch the trailer for ‘Soul’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Soul’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Albert Barillé
Airing date: April 2?, 1983
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
With ‘L’infini de l’espace’ Albert Barillé rounds up his personal science fiction story, which is the series ‘Il était une fois… l’espace’ (Once Upon A Time Space).
After the computer society had brought the constellation of Cassopeia to its knees, it has issued the same ultimatum to Omega. The episode opens with the council of Omega rejecting it, in name of the ‘dignity of man’. Nevertheless, after the gruesome defeat of Cassiopeia in ‘Combat de titans‘ the intergalactic bond knows it doesn’t stand a chance, and most of the episode has an atmosphere of inescapable doom, with an added dose of melodrama.
Maestro and Metro set off to try to find a way to penetrate Yama’s strong defense field, but soon Maestro takes a different path, a spiritual one, in which he apparently meets Psi’s mysterious visitors, who are the possessors of the mysterious vessel in episode 1. It’s these mysterious superbeings that finally pop up as a deus ex machina, destroying Yama’s whole fleet with help of an unstable star in a matter of seconds. After the strong apocalyptic build up of the last three episodes, this announced yet all too easy solution comes a bit as a letdown.
The episode ends with an encounter with the more advanced species, in a scene reminiscent of the great science fiction movies ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968) and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977). The aliens tell our heroes that their help in this case was an exception, and that mankind should find its own way to the next, immaterial stage, through a path of kindness, tolerance and wisdom. The series ends with Psi remarking that they themselves had said something of the same kind to the primitive Cro-Magnon people in episode 5.
In a way the ethereal aliens are arguably as patronizing as the emotionless robots of Yama had been, but the aliens’ ways show a confidence in and compassion with mankind, which Barillé strongly juxtaposes to the cold reasoned violence of the computer superpower.
Thus ends ‘Il était une fois… l’espace’. The series probably has known few reruns, if any at all, and is not as well-known as its successor, ‘Il était une fois… la vie’ (Once Upon A Time… Life), let alone contemporary American series like ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’ or ‘The Smurfs’. Unlike the creators of those latter two series, however, Albert Barillé dared to take children seriously, sharing with them his views on more mature subjects like politics, philosophy, spirituality and mankind itself. I was one of those kids, and I thank him for it.
Watch ‘L’infini de l’espace’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is the 26th and last episode of ‘Il était une fois… l’espace’ (Once Upon a Time… Space)
To the 25th episode: Combat de titans (The Battle of the Titans)
Director: Raoul Servais
Release Date: 1971
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Operation X-70 is a half silly, half scary short by Belgian film maker Raoul Servais.
It tells about a poisonous gas, which turns people into spiritual beings. The gas is advertised as a ‘clean weapon’, because it doesn’t kill people. When the gas is accidentally bombed on the Benelux (Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg), it turns people into angels.
The film impresses with its weird idea, its dark and gloomy atmosphere, and its anti-war message. However, like Raoul Servais’s earlier film ‘Goldframe’ (1968), the film suffers from an all too present dialogue. In the end the short’s images are more lasting than the film itself is.
Watch ‘Operation X-70’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 