Earlier than he died, realizing that the top was coming, Ryuichi Sakamoto deliberate one final efficiency. The movie — which encompasses a career-spanning choice from his oeuvre of pop music, film scores, and experimental and ambient compositions — rearranges many songs for solo piano; a showcase of the power and mutability of Sakamoto’s work. In a press assertion, Sakamoto mentioned the set listing was locked a lot additional forward than he normally deliberate. He defined: “The director, Neo Sora, was fairly strict.”
It’s a little bit of a joke. Neo Sora is Sakamoto’s 33-year-old son, and the individual the composer requested to shoot his final live performance. Effectively, technically, it was Norika, Sakamoto’s long-time supervisor, who made the request. (Norika can be Sora’s mom.)
The timing wasn’t nice. Sora was in the midst of pre-production on his personal debut function. However household got here first. Sakamoto had been combating rectal most cancers for a number of years, and his well being was declining.
“‘Pay attention, if we miss this window of taking pictures, I really feel like we’d not have the ability to do it once more,’” Sora recalled his mom saying. “‘So are you able to please do it?’”
He agreed, put his personal movie on maintain, and some months later, acquired began on what would ultimately be Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, the lasting impression of one of many world’s most influential and celebrated musicians.
You would possibly anticipate a career-spanning live performance movie to look one thing like, say, the maximalist business spectacle of Taylor Swift, or to take notes from the Speaking Heads’ mischievous Cease Making Sense, rereleased in theaters by A24 late final 12 months. However the inspirations for Opus had been extra humble. Sora watched a efficiency of virtuosic pianist Glenn Gould and conductor Leonard Bernstein from the ‘60s titled The Artistic Performer, in addition to the dramatized Thirty Two Quick Movies About Glenn Gould. What he discovered was that by simplifying the visible language of the cinematography, it will pressure the viewer to pay nearer consideration to the music. With that, Sora started storyboarding and compelled Sakamoto to decide to a set listing additional forward than he would’ve appreciated.
Was it troublesome working together with his father? Sora described their relationship on set as skilled: Sakamoto didn’t give notes on the filmmaking, and Sora didn’t weigh in on the efficiency. “I feel I’d take him not saying something to me concerning the filming course of as a illustration of his belief,” he mentioned.
Shot in simply over per week in September 2022, Opus is a spare and intimate movie. In stark black and white, the live performance is only a man performing behind a grand piano. Off digicam, although, there was a crew of over thirty individuals, contained in the well-known NHK Broadcasting Heart’s 509 Studio in Tokyo, attempting to be as quiet as attainable.
The placement, as with many choices for the movie, was Sakamoto’s selection. He believed the studio had “the best acoustics in Japan.” But it surely additionally introduced particular challenges. The outdated wooden floors had been creaky, which means the complete crew — a mixture of Japanese and English audio system — needed to put on socks and no footwear. As a result of the studio was in a broadcast tower, no radio-wave-emitting gear was allowed, which means the whole lot needed to be bodily linked. (“There wanted to be loads of wire wranglers,” and extra individuals meant extra individuals making noise.)
After which there have been Sakamoto’s personal bodily limits. He may solely do a handful of takes a day. Sora recalled, “There have been simply sure songs that he simply couldn’t actually play that effectively anymore. His fingers simply weren’t as dextrous, and I feel a part of it was the unintended effects of the remedy that he was taking, that it was affecting the extremities.” Sakamoto was placing Vaseline on his fingers to assist with the ache.
In the identical assertion, written after taking pictures, Sakamoto detailed how troublesome the efficiency was on his physique. “I felt totally hole afterward, and my situation worsened for a few month,” he wrote. “Even so, I really feel relieved that I used to be in a position to document, earlier than my demise, a efficiency that I used to be glad with.” He died in March 2023.
I met Sora in New York forward of the film’s theatrical launch and almost a 12 months since Sakamoto’s passing. He was ending up his first, still-untitled function movie, the one he’d briefly placed on maintain to make Opus. Sora informed me that it’s about two associates who drift aside as one turns into politically aware and the opposite stays willfully ignorant. He’s been engaged on it for the higher a part of a decade and hopes to submit it to festivals this 12 months.
“I didn’t need Opus to return out first, however these issues you’ll be able to’t actually assist or management an excessive amount of,” Sora mentioned. “I’ve all the time simply needed individuals to know me only for one thing I do individually from my father.”
Regardless of being the director of Opus, Sora is reluctant to say authorship over it. “I used to be attempting to be a conduit for no matter he needed to do, and I feel what he needed to do was a live performance,” Sora mentioned.
Although lots of the selections — the idea, location, items — could have been Sakamoto’s, it’s arduous to disregard Sora’s refined hand all through Opus. For what was all the time meant to be the ultimate efficiency from a rare artist, the movie doesn’t really feel like a somber affair. At the same time as Sakamoto struggles to complete sure items, his fingers not what they as soon as had been, the vitality draining from his ailing physique, there’s a sense of triumph every time a track reaches its remaining notice. A lot is conveyed by the silence that comes after — the reduction of execution, a glimpse of ecstasy.
That’s, maybe, the magic of what Neo Sora has made: a live performance movie that’s only a efficiency, and in addition greater than that.
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is in theaters now and can ultimately stream on the Criterion Channel.