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Mike and I watched this movie while I was folding and putting away laundry last night.
Overall, it was a decent film. But just that - decent.
Not sure it was good enough, honestly, to be one of my 2 or 3 new movies a year that I watch. Ah well - I chose to watch this one for the philosophy.
As an aside: I've come to realize that when people uncomfortable with spirituality want to talk about spiritual things, they use the word "quantum".
May I never use the word "quantum". Amen, namaste.
So... let's discuss the film's priors.
They faced an issue from the very beginning, as they (read: Disney) didn't want to offend anyone. Which, hey, I think they succeeded. It's hard to be offended by this movie (though some reviewers tried pretty hard, sigh - and notably, not about the spiritual stuff, but the racial portrayals... the times, they are what they are). But their success also prevented the film from saying anything particularly deep.
The messages it does send - that life is OK even if you don't achieve anything spectacular, and also, that achieving your lifelong dream isn't an "end-point" - are perfectly fine and true. But they apply more to privileged Pixar employees whose greatest problem in life is their workaholism, than they do to me.
My life is entirely unspectacular. And, I am unlikely to achieve anything the world will consider "great" or "significant". But this doesn't bother me. In fact, I have a moment like the one they went into slow-mo for - a pause to appreciate how beautiful everything in this world is - at least once a week. Old hat! In the way that never really becomes that, of course.
I am happy to be a small part in a great chain that is much, much larger than myself. That lesson is learned.
But the meatier questions of the afterlife - whether or not good is rewarded and bad punished, or what the definitions of 'good' and 'bad' even are, or whether it's all just a black void (the movie does suggest 'no' to this), or whether or not we are reincarnated, and so on and so forth - the movie doesn't cover them. It says instead "Don't worry about it; just enjoy what we have!"
This is a message that works for happy people. But it doesn't work for suffering people.
The movie pinpoints the worst possible suffering (Soul 22's low point) as "I have no purpose!" That's wise, in some ways, but portrayed... shallowly. I don't think they really sold it. Frankly I don't think that character really worked at all - 1,000 years of pissing all those mentors off should have given them an edge, which the character completely lacked. Does anyone *actually* think Tina Fey is edgy??
Then again - Disney. Also, they wanted kids to be able to be in the audience (even if they end up mostly bored).
I don't want to be too much of an asshole here. This is a beautiful film, whose message is going to be the right one at the right time for millions.
However. The choice to portray the "guardians" as bureaucrats… says a lot more about the world of the writers than they think it does.
The pirate ship with all the occult practitioners sailing it was kind of hilarious. And also, extremely telling of the world of the writers.
None of the "quantum" (LOL) beings were all that helpful, in any meaningful way - they were mostly just there, operating the bureaucracy. It was the meditating humans who were actively going in and saving the lost souls. That puts their cosmology opposite to most traditional faiths, in which it's the gods/saints/angels/bodhisattvas who rescue those in need, whereas humans are just sort of struggling along.
Yes, indeed... all of this is very telling of the world(view) of the writers.
This, I think, is something I can delve into further in my next review, of a very different (yet related) work.
Overall, it was a decent film. But just that - decent.
Not sure it was good enough, honestly, to be one of my 2 or 3 new movies a year that I watch. Ah well - I chose to watch this one for the philosophy.
As an aside: I've come to realize that when people uncomfortable with spirituality want to talk about spiritual things, they use the word "quantum".
May I never use the word "quantum". Amen, namaste.
So... let's discuss the film's priors.
They faced an issue from the very beginning, as they (read: Disney) didn't want to offend anyone. Which, hey, I think they succeeded. It's hard to be offended by this movie (though some reviewers tried pretty hard, sigh - and notably, not about the spiritual stuff, but the racial portrayals... the times, they are what they are). But their success also prevented the film from saying anything particularly deep.
The messages it does send - that life is OK even if you don't achieve anything spectacular, and also, that achieving your lifelong dream isn't an "end-point" - are perfectly fine and true. But they apply more to privileged Pixar employees whose greatest problem in life is their workaholism, than they do to me.
My life is entirely unspectacular. And, I am unlikely to achieve anything the world will consider "great" or "significant". But this doesn't bother me. In fact, I have a moment like the one they went into slow-mo for - a pause to appreciate how beautiful everything in this world is - at least once a week. Old hat! In the way that never really becomes that, of course.
I am happy to be a small part in a great chain that is much, much larger than myself. That lesson is learned.
But the meatier questions of the afterlife - whether or not good is rewarded and bad punished, or what the definitions of 'good' and 'bad' even are, or whether it's all just a black void (the movie does suggest 'no' to this), or whether or not we are reincarnated, and so on and so forth - the movie doesn't cover them. It says instead "Don't worry about it; just enjoy what we have!"
This is a message that works for happy people. But it doesn't work for suffering people.
The movie pinpoints the worst possible suffering (Soul 22's low point) as "I have no purpose!" That's wise, in some ways, but portrayed... shallowly. I don't think they really sold it. Frankly I don't think that character really worked at all - 1,000 years of pissing all those mentors off should have given them an edge, which the character completely lacked. Does anyone *actually* think Tina Fey is edgy??
Then again - Disney. Also, they wanted kids to be able to be in the audience (even if they end up mostly bored).
I don't want to be too much of an asshole here. This is a beautiful film, whose message is going to be the right one at the right time for millions.
However. The choice to portray the "guardians" as bureaucrats… says a lot more about the world of the writers than they think it does.
The pirate ship with all the occult practitioners sailing it was kind of hilarious. And also, extremely telling of the world of the writers.
None of the "quantum" (LOL) beings were all that helpful, in any meaningful way - they were mostly just there, operating the bureaucracy. It was the meditating humans who were actively going in and saving the lost souls. That puts their cosmology opposite to most traditional faiths, in which it's the gods/saints/angels/bodhisattvas who rescue those in need, whereas humans are just sort of struggling along.
Yes, indeed... all of this is very telling of the world(view) of the writers.
This, I think, is something I can delve into further in my next review, of a very different (yet related) work.