BEFORE: I've got a loose accidental theme going for this week, one beyond racial matters or Oscar nominations, but I think I'm going to wait one more day before saying what it is, I don't want to jinx it. But before starting "Soul" late last night, I watched two other things online - first, an episode of "Conversations with Harold Hudson Channer" at mnn.org - it turns out that I don't get this show on my cable system, because it's on Manhattan Public Access cable, and I don't live in Manhattan. (Queens public access channels are available to me, but they're just a bunch of zoom meetings right now...). But all 4,863 episodes of "Conversations with Harold Hudson Channer" are available on-line, dating back to 1973, though the archiving/indexing system leaves something to be desired. I watched episode 4,571 dated January 27, 2020 where he interviewed Marilyn Mach vos Savant, the person with the highest certified I.Q., however it appears the episode was recorded some time in February of 1986, confirmed by their name-checking President Reagan. Now I don't know what to think, if the newer episodes were just re-broadcasts of old episodes, or if they recorded so many episodes during the 80's and 90's that it took until 2020 to air them all, or maybe Channer died back in the early 2000's and the show managed to broadcast from the Great Beyond for twenty more years. Either way, this whole show is something of an enigma and I think bears further investigation, or perhaps a documentary film needs to be made about Channer, and I'll get more understanding by watching that.
Then I watched "Two Distant Strangers", which is a short film, and those just don't count towards my annual total, because those are my rules. Feature films only, usually, no exceptions unless I say so - but I am allowed to mention them here, even if they don't count. This is the Oscar-nominated live-action short that's somehow on Netflix, which is fine - in past years people have had to go to the movie theater to see a collection of all the Oscar-nominated shorts, which is another way to go and is also fine, but now we're putting short films on Netflix if they're important, and I believe this one is. It's another riff on the "Groundhog Day" format, but it features a black man waking up after a romantic encounter, and he needs to get home to feed his dog, only he encounters a white racist cop every time, and this always ends badly. In the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others, this was already a scenario that felt like it was on constant repeat, and this film really drives that point home. This may be the only Oscar-nominated live-action short that I watch before the ceremony, so if this one wins, I'm totally fine with that. Thematically it fits in perfectly for me, in-between "Palm Springs", another time-loop, and "Soul", another film about an African-American man dying, and what comes after.
Now here's the non-repeating list of films airing tomorrow on TCM - Wednesday, April 14 is Day 14 of their "31 Days of Oscar" programming:
6:15 am "Kisses For My President" (1964)
8:15 am "Kitty Foyle" (1940)
10:15 am "Knights of the Round Table" (1953) - SEEN IT
12:15 pm "La Ronde" (1950)
2:00 pm "La Strada" (1954)
4:00 pm "Ladies in Retirement" (1941)
6:00 pm "Lady Be Good" (1941)
8:00 pm "The Lady Eve" (1941)
10:00 pm "The Ladykillers" (1955) - SEEN IT
12:45 pm 'The Last Picture Show" (1971) - SEEN IT
2:00 am "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995) - SEEN IT
4:00 am "The Letter" (1940)
Wow, TCM getting racy after midnight, I like it. Let me remind you that TCM somehow gets a pass (because classic films deserve to NOT be censored) and therefore the channel sometimes airs classic nudity. What you do with that information is up to you - there's a very classic naked pool party in one of those films. Classic. Anyway, I'm only hitting for another 4 out of 12, so 65 out of 159 means I'm down to 40.8%.
June Squibb carries over from "Palm Springs".
THE PLOT: After landing the gig of a lifetime, a New York jazz pianist suddenly finds himself trapped in a strange land between Earth and the afterlife.
AFTER: Hoo boy, where do I even START with this one? Better buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy ride... First off, let me mention that I'm a proud agnostic, a Catholic in recovery, if you've read any of my Easter-time posts you'll know I rejected the whole Jesus-as-the-Son-of-God things ages ago, and when confronted with questions about what, if anything, comes after this thing we call life, I'm proud to say, "I have no idea." Anyone who says otherwise, I believe, is trying to sell you something. Probably nothing happens, a whole lot of nothing - look, what were you before you were born? Nothing, right? You were nothing, nowhere, in a state of non-existence. After you die, same thing - it's simple. I'd like to imagine otherwise, but I'm not really holding out much hope. This is why life is important, you get one, that's all, and when it's over, it's over, so it's up to you to make the most of it, make it count, enjoy it, or don't, it's your choice. Either way, there will be no regrets, because you won't exist, therefore incapable of feeling regret. You might have a flash of regret on your way out, like "Oh, maybe skydiving was a bad idea..." or "Just my luck, I swam next to a very hungry shark" but it may not last long.
So I just don't think that animation studios should even BE in the afterlife business - kids' heads are already way too full of religious dogma, passed down from their parents, that tell them that when they die, they get a deluxe split-level condo floating on a cloud somewhere, they'll be surrounded for eternity by all their previously deceased family members, plus their dead pets, they get a halo and a harp and a set of wings, and then they just have to be happy for the rest of eternity, maybe watch over an assigned human from time to time. Unless, of course, their sins outweighed their good deeds and they spend eternity in the lake of fire. But it's all B.S., every little bit of it. We already had "Coco", an animated film based on the Mexican Day of the Dead, in which the departed souls live forever in apartments in a giant version of Mexico City, provided that they still have family in the living world that still remembers them. More B.S.
To be fair, the storytellers at Pixar have crafted a new version of the afterlife that removes all the religious affiliations - a secular version of heaven, they just kept some of the parts that made no sense, like souls leaving the physical body, traveling up up UP towards heaven (umm, in which direction in outer space is that, exactly?) on a giant escalator/conveyor belt and then there's some form of administrative personnel in charge of the universe who count souls, process souls, and get them ready for either reincarnation/recycling or some form of eternal rest. Then they discarded or omitted God, St. Peter, the hierarchy of angels, and hell, for that matter - all of which I approve of, but replacing this nonsense with a pile of other nonsense isn't really that much of an improvement, is it?
This is bad for kids on so many levels, but here's my main problem - if heaven's such a great place, then why don't we all want to go there, as soon as possible? Then the next illogical step is suicide, isn't it? And we don't want kids doing that, because what if all the stories about heaven are just that, stories? Wanting there to be a paradise in the next life doesn't make it so. And then why are people doing their best to stay alive, take care of their health, and why are we sad when our friends and family pass away? Because deep down, we KNOW, even if we don't want to admit it or deal with the encroaching void on a daily basis. But come on, the sooner you acknowledge it, the sooner you can use that as personal encouragement to keep on living. Right? You tell your kids to be careful, look both ways when crossing the street, don't play with matches - because you know, right? Filling their heads with nonsense about heaven, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny is a temporary fix that's only stunting their intellectual growth.
So here we have Joe, a music teacher who dreams of playing jazz professionally, but he feels he's stuck. First off, being a music teacher is a very noble profession - my mother was an elementary school music teacher for many years, why is that not enough for him? Also, there's nothing about being a music teacher that would prevent him from playing jazz in a club on nights and weekends. HE CAN DO BOTH, so why doesn't he? I think Joe has very narrow thinking when it comes to his own abilities, millions of people have hobbies and side hustles. Teaching kids is a great day job, he shouldn't be ashamed of it (nor should the thousands of teachers out there who may watch this film, which seems like it's out to make them feel "less than") and he could play in a band over the summer, and/or nights and weekends, does he not realize this? Or has he placed some kind of limitation on himself and his abilities?
Joe finally gets the gig he's been looking for, a spot playing piano for a famous saxophonist and her band - and he's so excited over this that he rushes to tell everyone, across a crowded NYC street, past a sidewalk littered with banana peels, and other cartoon clichés, leading to a very ironic death. Hey, that's life, as soon as you feel like you're on top of the world, you're doomed, that clock starts ticking. But as he rides that big escalator up to that big bug-zapper (?) in the sky, he feels like he's entitled to a second chance, so he starts running the other way, away from paradise. Every other soul, mind you, has accepted their fate, and are just nonchalantly riding along to the next thing, whatever it is. I'm with Joe on this one, get back to life, stay alive as long as you can, just in case the universe is one giant scam, and there's nothing on the other side.
But he falls off and lands in limbo, or nowhere, or the rebranded "YouSeminar", which is where they train/mentor souls for their entry into the world. There's a lot of ambiguity here about destiny vs. free will, because before the souls even are born, they have to pick their thing, their "spark", the thing that's going to keep them interested and entertained in their own life. Apparently you can't be born without this - but this is another bad idea to put into kids' heads, because during the course of your lifetime, you can do more than one thing. You could have an interest in sports when you're a teen, then find a new passion in your 30's. You could be a soldier in your 20's, and then get out of the military for any reason and be a firefighter, or a car salesman. You can collect stamps when you're a teenager, then realize later on that's a waste of time. Your life can change a lot, and your interests and hobbies can change along with it.
Anyway, Joe somehow impersonates a renowned Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist and is assigned mentor duties to Soul #22, who's been around for thousands of years and is resistant to find her "spark" and start living. Here's where the film can't really decide if the forces running the universe are competent ones or incompetent ones, because it somehow allows Joe to game the system by just grabbing the wrong nametag, but then when the "Hall of You" depicts moments from his life, it's definitely HIS life, not Dr. Börgensson's. So, WHAT GIVES, who the heck is running this place? The answer, apparently is a bunch of kindly beings all named Jerry, and one not-so-friendly accountant named Terry. If I were a schoolteacher or an accountant, I would definitely boycott this movie.
Despite all the little nit-picky rules about how the Great Beyond and the Great Before work, or fail to work, Joe finds a way to game the system, and returns to Earth, along with Soul #22, thanks to the humans who visit "The Zone", which is a place that living human souls go when they're in a trance, or playing good music, or, I'm guessing, really stoned. Yet another bad idea to put into kids' heads - but since all the limbos are apparently connected, a hippie dude named Moonwind is able to help Joe, no matter which realm he's in. But the process of returning to life is not perfect, which leads to a sort of "Freaky Friday" soul-switching situation that also calls to mind "Ratatouille", only with a cat in place of a rat. ("Ratatouille" was a fun film, but I'm thinking that it just won't hold up during a re-watch, because there's a rat in a kitchen, which is just gross, and he controls a chef's actions by pulling on his hair, which doesn't even work, anatomically speaking.) There's also a bunch of non-specific stuff that reminded me of "Inside Out", too - I guess once you start playing with symbolic representations of what goes on inside human brains and bodies, it's a slippery slope and we end up HERE.
Can Joe get back to earth AND get his soul placed inside his own body in time for his big gig at the nightclub? And then comes the even bigger existential question - he's achieved a life goal, now what? OK, now it's all right to proceed into the Great Beyond, because he did a thing. NO NO NO, this is completely wrong, whose bucket list has exactly one item on it? We're supposed to not go quietly into that good night, what happened to rage, rage against the dying of the light? You crossed that big item off your list, go ahead and MAKE A NEW LIST, you big dummy! Never be satisfied with your life and say, "OK, that was long enough." Set a new goal, do another thing, see if you can juggle your teaching schedule with nights playing at the jazz club. Do you want your kids to get this final bad idea in their heads, that once they finish high school, win a championship, paint a picture, write a book, that life is suddenly OVER, they did enough? It should NEVER be enough, you should NEVER be done, NEVER give up, just find a new thing to do, because you're not limited to doing or being just one thing!
I just can't take it, this is nothing but terrible life advice based on a complete misunderstanding of how the universe works. I can't even imagine what the next generation of adults is going to be like if they take the messages of this film to heart.
NITPICK POINT: The movie is called "Soul", it's about Joe having a soul, and what happens to our souls after we die, and the music that he plays is therefore - jazz? What about SOUL music? Jeez, that double meaning was right there, so obvious, why not take advantage of it? I mean, sure, jazz musicians have "soul", sure, but that's an intangible quality that a film for kids just can't really explain, or even try to explain. But what's wrong with soul music, why wouldn't that have worked here? Jazz had its day, but that was back in like the 1920's. Are there a lot of kids listening to jazz music right now? No, there are not. What, exactly is jazz, even modern jazz? Again, the movie can't even be bothered to describe it, so I imagine an entire generation of kids scratching their heads over this.
NITPICK POINT #2: What happens to Mr. Mittens? We see his soul riding the big escalator to heaven, so do cats have souls? Well, yes, according to the Vatican, there is a pet heaven, and your kittehs and doggos will be waiting for you there when you arrive, in the split-level cloud condo that the angels built for you, and you get to spend all eternity with them keeping you, if you live a good life now. The religious leaders had a meeting, and they realized that as long as they're promising you so much outrageous stuff, what's one more thing. Now, is there a heaven for chickens and cows and spiders and snails, too, or is heaven only for the animals we like and don't eat? Just please clarify this for me, OK? And when you're done telling me how the universe works, and you're not a scientist, you can just go screw yourself, OK? Anyway, after the human soul leaves the cat's body, he's apparently FINE, so I guess his soul came back from heaven, or something? I thought you said that wasn't possible.
NITPICK POINT #3: It also makes no sense to assign personalities to souls before they are born. Without getting too much into the old "nature vs. nurture" argument, it's worth pointing out that over time, one's personality also can, you know, change. You will experience certain things during a lifetime, good and bad, and your reactions to these things will have an impact on your personality, and then there are other outside influences, like chemicals, mood-altering drugs, what you eat, drink and breathe, these things can all affect your personality over time. Then if you realize there's a problem, you can undergo therapy or make a conscious effort to change. My point is, there's no universe manager before you're born determining that you're going to be "a moody extroverted cynic who's extremely punctual". This is yet another misguided concept that really sells every human being short, and doesn't belong in the minds of children.
Also starring the voices of Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Whitney"), Graham Norton (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Rachel House (last seen in "The Hunt for the Wilderpeople"), Alice Braga (last seen in "The Shack"), Richard Ayoade (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Phylicia Rashad (last seen in "Creed II"), Donnell Rawlings (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Questlove (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Angela Bassett (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Daveed Diggs (last seen in "Wonder"), Cora Champommier, Wes Studi (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Fortune Feimster (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Zenobia Shroff (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Margo Hall, Rhodessa Jones, Esther Chae, Cody Chesnutt, Sakina Jaffrey (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Calum Grant, Laura Mooney, Peggy Flood, Ochuwa Oghie, Jeannie Tirado, Cathy Cavadini, Marcus Shelby, with a cameo from John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Onward").
RATING: 3 out of 10 abaci
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