Those who only know his film work may be exceptionally intrigued by the exploration of his synth-pop years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as part of Yellow Magic Orchestra, something of a precursor to groups such as Daft Punk.
#RYUICHI SAKAMOTO CODA MOVIE#
The movie is not without some hints of traditional biographical structures, but even these elements are more of a kaleidoscope of moments rather than a strict A-to-B structure. Sakamoto is more attuned to the world than ever before, and he does not intend to let it go without a fight. Lawrence accompanied by violin and cello. A snippet of a piano recital shown from a former evacuation site for earthquake and tsunami victims comes alive as he rifts on his theme from Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. We come to find exactly how his perspective has shifted over the past couple decades, and how that has not only informed his lifestyle but his music, as well.
It is easy to get swept up in the passion with which Sakamoto speaks out against this and other environmental catastrophes.
#RYUICHI SAKAMOTO CODA FULL#
It is only our first glimpse into Sakamoto the environmentalist, next seen in full hazmat suit exploring the restricted contamination zone of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The composer is immensely fascinated by the haunted past of this instrument, and his tickling of the tainted ivories feels as if he is communing with spirits long gone.
It is perhaps because the film is so sober in its handling of emotions that the sight of the composer’s joyous rictus when sounds “match” and come together after patient experimentation, is so powerfully thrilling.We first find Sakamoto coming across a baby grand piano in Northeast Japan that survived the 2011 tsunami but retains the stains from being partially submerged. Throughout, Sakamoto’s debt to Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and his own “love and reverence for the sounds of things” is made clear, with some mesmerising sequences from Solaris (1967) enriching Sakamoto’s meditation about death and impermanence. Nomura Schible then documents, with great sensitivity, the composer overcoming the creative block that overwhelmed him in the wake of illness: he wants to make more music-meaningful work that will be a worthwhile legacy-and the film follows him from Africa to the Arctic Circle, through woodland walks and even into his own backyard (where he stands, alert, with a bucket on his head, the better to hear the rain’s pattering), all in search of sounds to record and amplify digitally into beguiling crescendos of lapping drones. Stephen Nomura Schible’s film captures the musician in the wake of his diagnosis with throat cancer, and a connection is made, without fanfare, between the earth event of the tsunami, ensuing contamination and the personal catastrophe experienced by Sakamoto. With environmental concerns brought to the fore, and interlaced with myriad music and film references (from Bach to Resnais), the relationship between nature and art is at the centre of Coda, which begins with a trip to the Fukushima exclusion zone and an encounter with a piano that survived the 2011 tsunami: “I felt as though I was playing the corpse of a piano that had drowned,” says Sakamoto.
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