Soul (Pixar, 2020) is the animated film about jazz musician Joe Gardner who falls into a manhole on the verge of his big break and finds himself in a pre-birth realm where souls develop their personalities. It is Pixar's most explicitly philosophical film and the one that most directly engages questions Christians care about: What is the soul? What makes life meaningful? What happens after death?
Soul's central insight is one of the most important things any film has communicated recently: the purpose of life is not to find your one great passion and pursue it at the cost of everything else. Joe Gardner believes his life's meaning is jazz — only to discover, when he finally achieves his dream, that the performance did not feel the way he expected. The "spark" he was pursuing was not his passion. It was simply being alive and present.
This is a powerful critique of the self-actualization gospel that dominates contemporary culture. The film argues that purpose is found not in extraordinary achievement but in the texture of ordinary moments — which resonates with Ecclesiastes 9:10's instruction to do whatever you do with all your heart, and with the Christian understanding that all work done to God's glory has meaning.
Soul's afterlife framework — The Great Before, The Great Beyond, the soul-developing realm — is a secular philosophical construct with no relationship to Christian theology. Souls in Soul's universe exist before birth, developing personality in a pre-birth realm. This is closer to Platonic pre-existence or New Age soul-journey frameworks than anything biblical.
Genesis 2:7's account of God breathing life into Adam describes a soul that comes into being at creation, not one that pre-exists and arrives from elsewhere. Soul is a film to watch with conversation rather than passive absorption — particularly with older children who can engage the philosophical framework critically.
Soul contains no sexual content, no profanity, and no occult content in the traditional sense. Its metaphysical framework is secular but not spiritually dark. The film deals with death and near-death directly — Joe dies or nearly dies in the opening. Soul works best for ages 10 and up — not because of content concerns but because its philosophical themes require abstract thinking that younger children may not have. Soul scores 65/100 — Mixed.
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