Sitting alone earlier than a grand piano in a stark studio, Ryuichi Sakamoto takes the listener on a journey of his life, taking part in 20 of his compositions.
Shot solely in black and white, on three 4K cameras, the movie “Opus,” directed by Neo Sora, is the Japanese composer’s farewell, poetic but daring, and deeply heartfelt.
Its world premiere is ready for the Venice International Film Festival subsequent month. The filming happened over a number of days, only a half yr earlier than his dying on March 28 at 71.
Sakamoto had been battling most cancers since 2014, and will not do live performance performances, and so he turned to movie.
He performs items he had by no means carried out on solo piano. He delivers a placing, new slow-tempo association of “Tong Poo,” a composition from his early days with techno-pop Yellow Magic Orchestra that catapulted him to stardom within the late Seventies when Asian musicians nonetheless tended to be marginal within the West.
“I felt utterly hollow afterward, and my condition worsened for about a month,” Sakamoto says in an announcement.
He speaks just a few traces within the movie.
“I need a break. This is tough. I’m pushing myself,” he says barely audibly in Japanese, about halfway by way of the movie.
He additionally says, “let’s go again,” indicating he needs to play a sequence once more.
For the remainder of the almost two-hour movie, he lets his piano do the speaking.
The notes resonate from his fingers, lovingly shot in closeups, generally slowly, one pensive notice at a time. Other occasions, they arrive jamming in these majestically Asian-evocative chords which have outlined his sound.
After each bit, he lifts his fingers up from the keys and holds them there within the air.
“Opus” is a testomony to Sakamoto’s legendary filmography. He composed for among the world’s best auteurs, together with Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian DePalma, Takashi Miike, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Peter Kominsky and Nagisa Oshima.
The movie can also be proof he remained energetic till the very finish. He performs an excerpt from his meditative ultimate album “12,” launched earlier this yr.
By the time Sakamoto begins taking part in the melody from Bertolucci’s 1987 “The Last Emperor,” the feelings are virtually overwhelming. The soundtrack, which additionally included musician David Byrne, received each an Oscar and a Grammy.
Sora, the director, who was raised in New York and Tokyo, says he and the crew had been decided to seize the sense of time and timelessness, so essential in Sakamoto’s artwork, in what everybody knew may be his ultimate efficiency.
All the sounds that often get taken out in post-production, rustling clothes, clicking nails or Sakamoto’s respiratory, had been purposely saved, not minimized within the combine.
“Part of the reason why we decided to shoot in black and white was because we thought that also highlighted the physicality of his body, with the black and white keys of the piano,” mentioned Sora, named one of many 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2020.
Sakamoto first got here up with a set checklist, and the filmmakers labored out with him upfront an in depth plan for a visible narrative and idea.
Designed as a movie from the get-go, not only a documentary of a efficiency, the work options the lighting design, suave lengthy takes and Zoom-lens closeups concocted by Bill Kirstein, the director of images.
“We were able to get shots of hands and keys that we were never able to get before,” mentioned Kirstein, evaluating the movie’s imagery to a drawing.
Hundreds of kilos of weights had been laid on the ground so the digital camera dolly might transfer silently with out creaking.
A memorable second comes towards the tip when Sakamoto performs “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” from the 1983 Oshima movie bearing the identical title and starring David Bowie and Golden Lion-winner Takeshi Kitano.
Sakamoto additionally acted within the movie, portraying a World War II Japanese soldier who instructions a prisoner-of-war camp. He was younger, barely in his 30s. Yet in so some ways he remained unchanged as that frail silver-haired bespectacled man, crouched over his piano.
As the movie strikes to the ultimate tune, Sakamoto has disappeared, gone to that different world that some name heaven. The piano, underneath a highlight, is taking part in by itself, a reminder his music is everlasting, and nonetheless right here.
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