I first watched Soul with a friend and his first reaction was: “how can children actually understand that?” I assume it would be hard for a kid to make sense of a man going from alive to dead to being a cat to die again to finally be given a second chance.
Even though the story line is a bit hard to follow, Disney Pixar has yet again managed to succeed in creating a believable story of life. Let aside the refreshing black protagonist and the amazing work on music, Soul is also great because it is mythic.
By mythic here I mean in the literal sense – it gives an explanation, or at least tries to, to a phenomenon no one really understands. It has the soothing effect of Greek mythology for it goes behind the logical to give us an insightful and imaginative story of how we come to be who we are.
I don’t think this movie would be hard for a kid to understand, quite the opposite actually, it would be a great opportunity for them to reflect on identities and the big question of life and death. We as students may not remember how it felt when we were eight and trying to understand how babies are made, but we surely still wonder what makes us who we are. How did we come up with our identities? What or who decided of this? Soul explores those existential questions and allows us to escape our daily struggles to wonder about the bigger questions.
I will personally always be fascinated by the amount of work that is required to create an animated movie, but I am even more impressed by the quality of this one for it combines spiritualism and beauty. Everything from the colors to the details of the falling leaves to the music is exquisite and allows you to fully immerse into the world of Soul.