This movie is a masterpiece. Visually speaking, the animation is gorgeous and reminds one of Cartoon Saloon's films, and much like Wolfwalkers it deals with the themes of colonialism and nature. Only instead of taking place in the past, it takes place in the present as a group of activists try to stop pipelines being built, drawing strength from oral traditions.

In these oral traditions, the Coyote naturally takes center stage. While some critics have seen the portrayal of Coyote as too negative, in some cultures he is indeed an "evil" figure, and some of the stories like 'Coyote and the Wasichu' are indeed taken from real oral traditions. The fact that coyote has four lives like a cat is a film invention though. I speculate in part why the Coyote is used as a main antagonist is that more overt symbols of human evil in Native American stories, like wendigos and skin-walkers, are taboo and he's not.

Overall, check out this movie. It will truly humble you.

As a hungarian and a fan of animation, I knew it was a matter of time before I checked this out. Scriptwriter Géza Bereményi is a big name in Hungary, he has written many importan movies here, like Eldorado and Bridge-Man. The director is less known, but overall the movie is well written and directed. The animation is very unique, fluid yet with a sort of angular look to many character, especially the humans, while the animals are more fluid and life-like, except for the titular Coyote - who looks more like a cartoon character from an 90ies Nickelodeon show, on purpose.

The story is mostly about creation, and the negative effect people have on their environment and nature. That'd be all right and good, after all many movies from Ferngully to Avatar had an environmentalist message. But those were original stories written for that purpose. Unfortunately this one tries to squeeze this heavy forced message about the evils of humans (but especially men) and the repercussions of greed, lust and selfishness into a native american creation myth. As a result, the titular Coyote, who in those legends is more of a trickster figure who either educates people or helps them (such as by stealing fire) or does a foolhardy venture that fails and helps people learn from his mistake (and laugh at his folly) rather turns into a Satan-like figure, the source of literally all evil in the world. I have read my fair share of creation myths, and Coyote was never the source of evil, or did he create humans just to spite the Old Man (the wise creator figure who follows dreams sent by the Manitou). During the course of the movie, he commits the first murder just to sate his appetite, tricks other animals to deadly accidents so he can eat them, frames his own creation, the humans, for his own sins, causes animals to want to reproduce, wants to rape his own creation, and so on. He is less Loki and more Mephistopheles here, always looking for a way to replace the Old Man or ruin his creations, even if he has nothing to gain.

The movie even portrays the first creation the same way as an idealized Garden of Eden where all animals lived in peace and ate plants before Coyote introduced killing to the world, causing everything immortal to be finite. He created the first native american man and woman from clay stolen from the Old Man, while his first discarded creation ends up thrown in the sea and becoming the white, african and asian man's ancestor, apparently.

The titular "four souls" refer to Coyote's quasi-immortality, as he can come back from the dead 4 times - unlike the real mythology, where he is permanently immortal. Unfortunately you will care little about his plight because he causes his own deaths himself with his petty lechery, greed and evil. But the humans fare little better, as they themselves are easily led astray (though the woman less so than the man, another modern view) and cause harm to the environment. The Old Man is shown as an irresponsible creator god, who gives little forethought to his actions and more often just goes with the flow and tries to mitigate disaster instead of having any foresight into what he does.

Overall I wish the writer would have made the story more similar to the real creation myths, and had not forced this hard to fit message into the movie. It is not a bad movie, but with few people to actually root for, not really that interesting. Also due to the gore, murders, female nudity, and a rather graphic depiction of childbirth, not really recommended for children.