To dramatise an adventure sprung from such angst, Docter and fellow filmmakers, including writer Mike Jones and writer/co-director Kemp Powers, decided to send their lead character to a space beyond Earth, removing all that is familiar.
In Soul, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a 45-year-old band teacher and aspiring professional jazz pianist. After Joe has an accident on a bustling New York street, he finds himself mentoring a soul in training (Tina Fey) in a wispy and trippy space where spirits arrive and depart in high volume, like some otherworldly Heathrow Airport.
Docter says the grand visual challenge became: “How do you make a world that doesn’t exist anywhere?” And then, how do animators even populate a supernatural world with characters that cannot appear to be as solid and corporal as Earthbound creatures?
“We developed new technology to handle the volumetric fog of the souls,” Docter says of the fuzzy and translucent beings floating along in the film’s so-called Great Before and Great Beyond. Pixar also created digital line work to help define the ethereal characters – a first for the studio.
The luscious art works in service to story, and Soul encourages viewers to ponder – partly through the metaphor of jazz – what moments do you appreciate in the improvisational acts of daily life, and what connections do you create that matter?
Soul urges viewers to think about living purposefully, producer Dana Murray says, “whether it’s about a piece of pizza or to put that phone down.”
Through one lens, Joe Gardner’s sudden loss of his daily rituals reflects what people have experienced during the pandemic. How do we treasure time in a surreal 2020, and how do we stay alert to the mindful moments?
“I’m aware daily of how much I miss,” Docter says. “The idea of just stopping and valuing what you have, of feeling the breeze in your face – that’s what life is about.
“I hope that the film kind of allows people to wake up a little bit, and recognise the amazing things and the gifts that they have all around them.”
So did Docter gain any midlife clarity through the making of this movie?
“I want to do something that is meaningful,” the director says, “that makes the world a richer place than it was before this movie.”
The Washington Post
