Sarah Leyva
Features Editor
Disney’s Pixar Studios released their latest film, “Soul,” on Christmas Day, giving everyone something to watch during the holidays. This was definitely not your average children’s movie, with a much heavier storyline with the concept of the before and after life. Jamie Foxx plays the protagonist in this new Pixar film, playing the role of an aspiring yet to be, jazz musician, “Joe,” who finally gets his dream gig that he had been waiting his whole life for. Until he is faced with the biggest inconvenience, death itself.
Joe ends up in a place where souls leave and come from and has his mind set on going back to Earth to make it to that gig. When Joe is in what they call, “The Great Beyond,” he is assigned to a new soul to be her mentor, who just happens to not want to go to Earth and he has to help her find her spark in order to get a ticket to Earth for himself.
They end up getting help from a mystic group who gets them back to Earth, but when they finally find their way back to Earth, Joe gets stuck in the body of a cat and the new soul is in his body.
I was very intrigued by the idea of finding our purpose and seeing that played out in the character of the new soul who also goes by “22.” I thought it was so interesting watching Joe finally get his big break and to think that it wasn’t everything he thought it would be.
He finally realized the difference between what it meant to have a spark and a purpose, he thought his whole life that playing the piano was his purpose but didn’t realize how obsessed he became with this one gig that he made “22” feel like she had no purpose on Earth.
The idea of a soul having a spark is something that interests them, not that they can only do one thing in their life. I feel that this is so relevant now more than ever especially as college students, sometimes it’s so easy to feel like we are so young to decide what we are going to do for the rest of our lives and to have that pressure on us can be stressful.
Joe really developed a passion for music but when it took over he became selfish and told 22 she had no purpose, she then became obsessed with this idea that she had no purpose and it isolated her from the people around her and it became an obsession and an anxiety disorder that made her turn into a lost soul.
People with these lost souls are depicted as these sluggish monsters that mope around until they are shaken back to reality when they realize the state they are in. For so many people an addiction can be the reason why they isolate themselves from other people and even at a young age I feel like we can feel the pressure to feel like we have to be obsessed to look like that celebrity or be like that athlete and we become so obsessed with this idea we forget to live for ourselves.
I really think this movie gave a nudge to many of us to take a deeper look at ourselves and to look around us and see if we are happy where we are right now to truly feel like if we were to die tomorrow we wouldn’t regret the life we are living today.
If you haven’t already seen it, it is definitely worth the watch and quite the conversation starter.
