Soul

After a long year of turmoil, Soul is the movie we needed. Released on Christmas, Soul is a movie about a music teacher named Joe (voiced by Jamie Fox) and his struggle to become a professional jazz player. But when a sudden accident happens, he is sent to another realm called ‘The Great Beyond’, which symbolizes the afterlife. From then on, Joe is on a quest to return back to his reality, finding out what it actually means to have a soul on the way.

This movie is great for many reasons, but one that stuck with me was the portrayal of death. Only a company like Pixar could make such a grim topic light-hearted, and even fun. This year has undoubtedly been a year for loss, from daily schedules to jobs to lives. No matter who you are, chances are you have lost someone you cared about this year. Seeing death as something that isn’t scary, subconsciously puts my mind at ease, even when you know the chances of you reincarnating to be a three-foot blue ghost in the afterlife are slim.

Although this is about Joe’s story, there are so many things that can apply to you personally. One of the main topics being, what is your passion? Yes, we all like certain things and maybe love them, but is it your passion, and if so, are you chasing that passion or merely just keeping it to the side of your daily life. Everybody is fueled by passion, whether that be a goal to become a better version of themselves or to learn more things. How we overall interact with our passion (or if we even know what our passions are), is key to the life that we live. Another topic was how much we take for granted. In the movie, Joe reflects on personal situations he dealt with, wishing he could change them or wishing he could appreciate that moment more. With being in quarantine, this is a lesson all of us could benefit from, taking life one day at a time and truly appreciating every moment we are granted for such a limited time on earth.

This movie is great. It’s symbolic, touching, funny, and shows a great representation of my culture. I love Pixar’s timing in this movie and think that we can all take a valuable lesson from this movie with the year we had.