Soul-searching

Cold Souls probes human existence—and makes it fun | Sam Thielman

Samuel Goldwyn Films

What is the soul, exactly? Is it a force that acts on "a small gland" in the center of the brain, to quote Rene Descartes? Is it a meaningless construct created by ignorant people who fear change, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins?

Or is it a chickpea?

In Cold Souls, the final conclusion is merely a part of the whole, but a significant part. Paul Giamatti (beautifully playing an unflattering version of himself) is a deeply unhappy, neurotic actor going through a crisis: He can't seem to play the title role of a deeply unhappy, neurotic aristocrat in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

Rather than scare up a prescription for the anti­depressant of the month, Paul hunts down an organization he's read about in The New Yorker: The Soul Storage Company, a clinic that extracts your immortal soul and stores it, either at its facility or at a warehouse in New Jersey. The organization's head physician, Dr. David Flintstein (David Strathairn), gives Paul a friendly consultation, and he decides to go for it.