If you are 2020 and I just as bad, late really nothing worth summarizing barely to hand over a answer, "I'm still alive" so when you finish reading the soul's journey ", the film, perhaps in a certain corner of the world with me high-five - yes, nothing too it doesn't matter, at least this story gives us comfort.

Pixar proved with its 23rd feature that it had gone further down the innovation road. I enjoyed the audio-visual, theme, plot and all aspects of the shock, but also for the anxiety. It's not going to be a hit IP, it's not even going to be aimed at kids, the main audience of cartoons, it's going to be a late-night chat with a small group of adults -- let's talk about life.

Oh life? What's there to talk about? Especially when adults over 30 go to the movies, most of them just want to peek through the cracks of ordinary life, catch their breath, have a good laugh, and then walk out like nothing's happened and get back to reality.

But "Inside" is so out of line. Instead of pulling you away from reality -- as an animated film, it gives up on making a fairy-tale fantasy -- it plunges you back into the familiar world of noisy cities, busy streets, crowded people... You're still listening to the city, being lit up, feeling small amid the traffic.

Yes, the main character is as ordinary as you. Joe, a black music teacher with dreams of being a musician, gets a job in the school music room that doesn't matter. He spends days with kids who don't like music.

His mother may be just like yours. Dislike you have no stable job over 30 years old, still have to rely on her hard work in order to get your relative stability. When you finally get a job with social security after drifting for so long, you can't even dream of talking to her about it. She can only show you what she's doing right now and make you scared.

Yes, how familiar. Like me, or you, every day of our lives. Instead of creating a more beautiful and better fairy tale, where there are no Kings of adventure or captains of discovery or warriors, we see Joey on screen as Joey sees himself in another world -- boring, boring, with no tomorrow. If he also has a monument of life, that statue is not made a great man by death's patronage. He was still the same man sitting by the washing machine waiting for his clothes to be ready, only transformed into a sculpture without surprise.

This bland look back is frightening. It does raise a question we don't want to face when we watch movies for entertainment: Why am I alive?

I even think the creators are cruel. After all, Joey had an obsession with being a jazz musician, at least for a moment, on the stage of his dreams. And most people... We... If we don't have even the bare minimum of Joey's dreams (or "life goals"), what do we do every single day of our lives for?

The question is so cruel that you have to face it, think about it, and consider the urgency of its answer, because life suddenly comes to an end and the greatest chance of life comes. The question that was so familiar was thrilling:

"Would you be sorry if you were to die now?"

Joey races back as fast as he can on the road to the other side of life. I never expected to see such a horrifying scene in a Pixar cartoon. It foreshadows the inevitability of death, the limitlessness of life, the common sense that we all know, but I was on pins and needles.

I even wanted to do something, to come up with my answer, to go back somewhere in my life that I could trace, to start over, to find the spark, to live again without regret...

At this point, Pixar offers its warm side. As frightening as the "other side of life" is, the "place of birth" is hopeful. Here you are new, free, open, full of possibilities. It's a place where you can imagine how to live, and start a journey without fear.

But don't let your guard down. Thinking about the meaning of life has not been made irrelevant by the cozy surroundings of the Mind Institute.

Important person 22 finally appears, she has lived for thousands of years, the heart old enough to "live" without any hope, and only to such mediocre "live" for fun.

This is probably the most "evil" character I've ever seen in a cartoon. Despite her soft face, she was dark inside. She is more frightening than any of the "bad guys" in a cartoon about the binary opposition between good and evil, because she is not someone else, but maybe a different part of us, a different version of ourselves.

Code 22, she stands for hopelessness, inferiority, isolation, fear, paranoia, hatred,... She had a reason for any negative feelings, and she had no intention of living. At the Mind Institute she had become a stubborn old fool, unmoved by the great souls of thousands of years of human history, possessed of the darkest energy -- hopeless.

In cartoons, "hopeless" has been put too gently. Without that "pass", there is no spark of life. The concept of life and death is portrayed as a figurative world without soul or spark, but without a flicker on screen. But in my abstract consciousness, her lack of spark has represented infinite darkness.

It's not that creative to create these Spaces between life and death. After all, with Coco, Pixar has used brilliant technology to present us with a grand, shadowy world. However, I get the shock of innovation in "Journey of The Mind", because here, life seems to have many dimensions. Apart from life and death, there is still some chaos between life and death, which needs to be overcome by the individual of life.

What we can perceive in movies:

One, the real world of living in the flesh.

Two, the other side of life, that is, the road leading to death.

Third, the place of birth, namely the mind academy, the virtual world of shaping personality before life.

Four, between life and death, the land of selflessness.

I can't say the story is all that new if it's just shuttling back and forth between the duality of living and dying. But when the threes and fours appear and become figurative fullness, it provides us with many mirrors, in observing the living Joy, the unformed soul 22, and in discovering the multifaceted nature of our own lives. So even we can't help but look at the "black holes" that represent boundaries: what would I look like in a world of different dimensions?

A fund manager obsessed with closing deals? A crazy street artist? A professor who has devoted his life to mankind's learning? Or a so-and-so who eats, drinks, sleeps and is bored to death? ...

Because of the distance of the wait-and-see, the outline of life becomes clear. Joy changes from a figurative person to an abstract soul, not only seeing the illusion of her own life, but even becoming a cat and seeing her own flesh alive.

With a distance to watch, Soul 22 also gained a new perspective on life. It's an interesting question not only to see how boring, mediocre people are outside the great spiritual teachers (like Joey), but to see how ordinary they are, clinging to life.

At this point, "Why do I live?" is not just "I want to live as a musician for once." This is a common theme that has been told in many stories. Now in Soul Quest, the question has become, "I am not meant to live to shine, but why am I still alive?"

The process of asking questions is like peeling an onion. When it seems to be almost finished, you feel the joy of getting the answer. Joey always believed that he could be a musician, that he could one day lose himself on the stage he loved. So he lived with passion.

But I never thought that this problem can be peeled down. There are questions behind the answers.

When Joey walked out the door of his favorite bar, he said, "I die with no regrets." He put on a great show. But it did not make life richer, more meaningful, more sparkling, and he, as the musicianess said, wanted to see the fish in the sea and thought all he saw was water.

But the ocean is water. Life is just like that.

Peeling the onion to the end, the answer is so boring. What you want in your life, what you think is your life's goal, turns out to be a musician's day after day, night after night. And so shined she, actually also and you at the moment, also in this ordinary "water".

Joey is doomed to be disappointed, and so am I. When you finally achieve a goal you've been longing for for half your life, you're doomed to endless disappointment in addition to the euphoria you get at that moment. Because what will I live for in the years to come? Why else should I approach each day with enthusiasm? I don't know.

The question left me feeling a certain intense emptiness. It is so familiar that I began to imagine the story of the creator faces, he also like me, people over the age of 30, in one day with animation or ask yourself when writing, oh I am so good at drawing or writing, I was born should do it, but I doubted middle-aged aimed at it the most, I really want to continue to do it? Who defines that I should always do one thing and not another?

The power of questioning is not necessary in cartoons, it is always directed at a specific enemy, not themselves. But in Spirit Adventure, I saw clearly that the enemy is the other side of us. The other side is full of doubt, insecurity, anxiety, denial, and like Soul 22, it can easily overturn anything you think is great or meaningful. And you have fought for it unrelentingly and paid so much that you can no longer face the past and can only console yourself, yes, only this goal is the meaning of my life, I can only, must go on like this.

I say this is a small number of people around the stove, because this question has been thrown at the threshold. It assumes that I have fought and tasted what I have gained. Like when I dream of a perfect marriage and a family with someone I love and find life so boring. When I finally get a promotion and a raise and still do the same job until payday comes around. For example, the fame and fortune I longed for, they were obtained through my hard work and luck, and I found that it was nothing more than that...

Next, the question is next, what am I supposed to live for? Are they still the real purpose of my life? The answer has been overturned. I overthrew myself.

That emptiness was what Joey felt -- and what I felt -- when he walked out the door. I never thought that a cartoon would strip the abstract things of meaning, purpose, obsession and motivation of life down to the air of embarrassment.

Life is meaningless at this point. It became someone else's turn, and I caught the "empty".

Because of this emptiness, I felt empathy for The Inner Journey. It is not the tears of bitterness, nor the joy of happiness, nor the laughter of humor, for all emotions are transcended. I actually felt the emptiness in the reality in a cartoon, and even asked myself again, why would it be like this?

But no one can give us an answer. Joey's idol won't give him the answers, and he needs to find them for himself. Instead, it is the character who once clung to emptiness, 22, who steps into reality, every little detail has meaning -- how ironic!

Don't hold the destination to live, but get the meaning of living. So what is the point of being alive? A fallen leaf? A run? A lollipop? Or once lying on the ground looking up at the sky? ... Seems to be both, seems to be neither.

When Joey played the flowing notes, I didn't get a definitive answer, only to feel a certain emptiness returning to fullness in my emotions. Understanding that nuance is as if he were actually talking through music -- music, after all, is a means of self-expression that our hero is not striving for. What he wants to freely express is the touching details of life and the tentacles of memory, and all the smallness and greatness that make him feel the sweet and sour of life will eventually be integrated into music and become a part of "spark".

Therefore, music is not an end in itself to be achieved. But through music, Joy can realize the freedom of expression and the freedom of soul. He can both live in the world and transcend it. He can feel the abundance of life through music, and touch the meaning of life through his own way...

Well, writing this, everything that seemed chaotic to me seems to have a little clarity. "Inside" is not a typical story about a protagonist pursuing his dreams. This story has different standards in different dimensions of life and death. If in Coco, we can still find a rope to reach the "other side of life" by relying on family, then in Journey of The Mind, the loneliness we feel can only be the barren pursuit in the fourth space, the pursuit of our own, without company.

Movies are the art of heartbreak. When the soul desert of the fourth dimension appeared, I was touched by something more, more complex, more indescribable than joey playing flowing notes on a glitzy stage. It turns out that there are so many people in the world like me in this desert obsession, and we can not help anyone, only to rely on their own bitter exploration. Suppose there is no sailing ship, no falling leaves, and no soul helmsman to resolve your sorrow. When wandering between life and death and forgetting oneself, after all, only oneself can discern which part is persistent and which part is paranoid. Soul number 22, in the heart of each of us, she is the living ghost.

This arcane conversation has to end. From birth to death, from death to life, if you are given a limited life and a limited journey, it is not necessarily true meaning, the world is already chaotic.

But I don't think all stories should tell you what the meaning is, what the goals are, what the successes are. The consolation in this conversation is that there is no shame in being a loser, no shame in being small and lonely, and everyone has a reason to exist. "Strange Journey of the Soul" as the name, just take our hearts to see the desert, but also see the glimmer.