Which is better: Pixar’s Soul or It’s a Wonderful Life?
Disney’s latest movie is the Frank Capra classic for a lonelier age.
This Christmas, I’ve been watching a movie about a downtrodden American who, with guidance from celestial beings, receives a second chance at happiness after discovering that life is a gift and he ought to count his blessings.
Most years, I’d be saying this about It’s a Wonderful Life, director Frank Capra’s enduring classic from 1946. This time, however, I’ve got my eye on Soul, Pixar’s new animated movie, which debuted on Disney+ on Christmas Day.
It’s a fine film: rich, nuanced, profound, complex, ambitious and stunning to look at. But will it stand the test of time in the same way as Jimmy Stewart hugging his fictional family close on Christmas morning? Let’s compare the two and find out.
Heavens above
You don’t have to look very far for the message of It’s a Wonderful Life: it’s there in the title. George Bailey, an everyman in the town of Bedford Falls, is a selfless, dutiful good guy who’s been putting other people first since childhood. But when George faces disgrace and ruin on Christmas Eve, it’s up to Clarence, an angel in training, to show him exactly how his life matters.
So ingrained is this film in American (and in my case, British) culture that I’m welling up with tears just writing about it. George stands for decency; for unflinching loyalty to family, friends and neighbours; for doing the right thing no matter what; and when the townsfolk rally round him at the end, he comes to see that his life is filled with love.
Faith, family, hard work and snapping out of a suicidal depression at the last minute: it’s like injecting 1940s virtues into your eyeballs.
So, do we live in a more sophisticated culture now? It’s tempting to say yes, given that Soul, ostensibly a children’s film, deals with similar themes about the point of life — arguably in more depth and from a much broader array of perspectives.
To be or not to be
The protagonist in this case is Joe Gardner, a middle-school band teacher in New York, with no apparent love life, a disappointed mother, an insecure income and unfulfilled dreams of making it big as a jazz pianist.
Ten minutes into the film, on the day those dreams look set to come true, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) falls down a manhole and finds himself on a stairway to heaven — not that they call it heaven in this determinedly non-denominational film. To Pixar and Disney, it’s the Great Beyond.
To the consternation of the Jerrys — the bureaucrats of the astral plane, not to be confused with angels — Joe winds up in the Great Before, a testing ground where souls develop a personality prior to their allotted time on Earth.
Here, he meets soul number 22, played by Tina Fey: a troublemaker who’s been there for centuries because, for all her bravado, she’s scared of living. On an even grimmer note, from time to time we glimpse a shambling army of lost souls, monstrous creatures who can’t relinquish their anxieties and obsessions. The Good Place this ain’t.
In her intransigence, 22 has driven a series of spirit-world mentors — Archimedes, Abraham Lincoln and George Orwell among them — to distraction.
And when she winds up on Earth with Joe — in his body, while he inhabits that of a cat — the unassuming music teacher, whom she’s already labelled sad and pathetic, introduces her to the incidental joys of life, be it eating a pizza or running your hand along some railings. By the time the story is over, he’s gained his wings like Clarence did.
I’d like to condense the film’s message into a snappy slogan, but it makes you work harder than that. Its meaning can be difficult to fathom at times, which on my first viewing left me dissatisfied. Was there a takeaway at all, in that case? I felt it at a gut level, but I can’t turn it into a four-word platitude like Hollywood did in 1946.
In the final reckoning, I prefer the straightforward sentiment of It’s a Wonderful Life, doubtless because I grew up with it.
But after two viewings in four days, the second one being far more rewarding, I’m beginning to think that Soul will endure for a very long time indeed. I’m just glad they didn’t call it Be Good to the People Around You and Don’t Confuse Your Career and Passions with Heartfelt Happiness.