"Soul" is a movie that made me burst into tears while watching it. This kind of moving is different from the previous movie viewing experience, because the film is not deliberately sensational, it just captures the most subtle, hard to perceive, and most easily overlooked moments of happiness and moving in the world. These moments are real in each of our lives. Maybe watching this movie a few years earlier would have brought me out of the quagmire of "constantly feeling like a total failure." This movie is the best "life education" and everyone should watch it.
(The following contains spoilers)
The protagonist of the film, Joey, is a middle school music teacher who has never met his talent. He had always dreamed of playing on stage, and seeing that his dream was about to come true, he died in a sudden accident. Joey's soul is unwilling to accept the fact that he is dead, and desperately wants to escape the "Reincarnation System of Heaven" (in the film, this post-death space is called "the other side of life"). In the end, he really escaped, but his soul did not return to the world, but fell into the "quasi-baby training academy" (in the film, this space for training the souls of human cubs is called "the place of birth"). In "Where We Are Born", accomplished deceased humans can act as mentors for "quasi-babies". Joey, who accidentally fell into this place, was also taken as a mentor by accident and assigned to a A student, a prospective baby soul named 22.
Joey was naturally very helpless, he didn't want to stay here for a moment, but because he was afraid of being discovered and sent back to "the other side of life", he could only bite the bullet and accept the job. I didn't expect 22 to be a super tough kid. He told Joey as soon as he came up, don't try to teach me anything, I know everything, I've been here for thousands of years, and countless famous people in history have Attempts to educate me have failed to convince me of a reason worthy of being born on earth. 22 Undoubtedly very clever, he is cynical, mocks everything, and has the ability to defuse all authority in the world. As a soul who has practiced for thousands of years, he already has the appearance of seeing through the world.
Joey felt helpless, but still honestly showed 22 his life and told 22 that he urgently needed to return to earth to realize his dream. Unexpectedly, 22 became interested in Joey, because he had never seen a person so failed and so desperate to live. So the two souls, one who didn't want to die and the other who didn't want to be born, started working together in various crooked ways, hoping to get Joey's soul back to Earth.
After some tossing, Joey really went back, but something went wrong again. 22, who didn't want to be born, also came to the world unexpectedly, and accidentally ran into Joey's body, and poor Joey's soul was attached to a cat's body. So on this day, Joey and 22, one by one, began to find ways to correct their mistakes and prepare for Joey's upcoming evening performance.
At first, 22 was extremely repulsive of everything in the world. The bustling crowd on the streets of New York and the noise from all directions made him extremely frightened. He simply shrank to the corner and refused any next action. So Joey, who turned into a cat, came up with a solution. He stole a dime of pizza for 22 to taste. As a result, this thousand-year-old world-weary old soul was conquered by a corner of pizza. Next, 22, who let go of himself, began to experience all kinds of human happiness that he had never imagined, which of course were trivial things. For example, tasting a corner of delicious pizza, listening to the soul singing of a singer in the subway station, picking up the leftover Coke from the seat of the subway car, or even simply walking on the street, looking up at the blue sky, and catching the autumn sun A seed falling from a tree...all of which makes 22 happy from the bottom of my heart. At the same time, he also began to accept and care about others unsuspectingly. He encouraged a little girl who likes music, had a conversation about life with the uncle of the barbershop, and had a heart-to-heart exchange with his mother... all of this All things Joey couldn't do when he was alive.
22 felt that he had found a reason to be born in this world, but Joey disagreed. He told 22 that what he felt was nothing more than "the mediocre daily life", and only the life of pursuing dreams and unwilling to be mediocre is meaningful.
Later, Joey threw 22 cruelly in the "place of birth" and exchanged it for his own body. He finally made it to the stage to perform and was applauded, but he was not as happy as he imagined, but rather disappointed. In a trance, Joey recalled the day 22 spent in his body, and he suddenly realized that he felt an unprecedented moving when watching 22 as silly as a newborn baby. He pulled out of his pocket a pile of 22 "babys", half a donut, a lollipop, an autumn seed and a few other messy gadgets - just like every one of us collected when we were kids tatters that have been passed and regarded as treasures. When Joey laid out these things on the piano stand, he suddenly realized the true meaning of life, and he recalled those moments in his life that he had forgotten—the caress of his mother, the company of his father when he was a child, and he rode his car and looked up at the branches. Under the sun, tasting a piece of chocolate cake, watching the sunset in New York on the subway... He thought that he would only be happy if he succeeded, but in fact he has been living in happiness. The moment of memory turned into notes, flowing from his fingertips, he was playing the tune of his life, but there was no audience, but he felt unprecedented satisfaction, this is everything 22 taught him. "Chao Wendao, it's okay to die in the evening", Joey is ready, and he wants to return the chance of life to 22.
From the second half of the movie, my tears couldn't stop falling. The story of this film is so small, yet so touching, that it gives a great meaning to every life. It reminds me of Kaguya who descended from the Moon Palace to the world in "The Story of Kaguya Princess". At the end of her life, this fairy who descended to earth declared that she came to this world to see a flower bloom, birds sing and bees fly. Look at Yunjuan Yunshu...
I thought again of that scene in Attack on Titan, where the protagonist, Alan, realizes his mediocrity and is deeply disheartened. His instructor just told him the story of Alan's deceased mother: the instructor once scolded Alan's mother for not pursuing and willing to be "an animal in the fence", but Alan's mother just answered peacefully, why she must pursue when she was born What about extraordinary? She looked at Ellen, who was still a baby in her arms, and said, "Look at this child, it doesn't matter if he is ordinary in his life, because he is already great to be born in this world."
These are my thoughts and thoughts about this movie.
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