Earlier than he died, figuring out that the tip was coming, Ryuichi Sakamoto deliberate one final efficiency. The movie — which incorporates 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 record 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. Properly, technically, it was Norika, Sakamoto’s long-time supervisor, who made the request. (Norika can also 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 capturing, I really feel like we’d not be capable of 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, received began on what would ultimately be Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, the lasting impression of one of many world’s most influential and celebrated musicians.
You may anticipate a career-spanning live performance movie to look one thing like, say, the maximalist industrial 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 have 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 could power the viewer to pay nearer consideration to the music. With that, Sora started storyboarding and compelled Sakamoto to decide to a set record additional forward than he would’ve appreciated.
Was it tough 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 believe 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 every 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 digital camera, although, there was a crew of over thirty folks, contained in the well-known NHK Broadcasting Middle’s 509 Studio in Tokyo, attempting to be as quiet as potential.
The placement, as with many selections for the movie, was Sakamoto’s alternative. He believed the studio had “the best acoustics in Japan.” However it additionally introduced particular challenges. The previous wood flooring have been creaky, which means all the 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 tools was allowed, which means every part needed to be bodily related. (“There wanted to be numerous wire wranglers,” and extra folks meant extra folks making noise.)
After which there have been Sakamoto’s personal bodily limits. He might solely do a handful of takes a day. Sora recalled, “There have been simply sure songs that he simply couldn’t actually play that properly anymore. His fingers simply weren’t as dextrous, and I believe a part of it was the negative effects of the treatment 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 capturing, Sakamoto detailed how tough the efficiency was on his physique. “I felt completely hole afterward, and my situation worsened for a couple of month,” he wrote. “Even so, I really feel relieved that I used to be in a position to report, earlier than my dying, a efficiency that I used to be happy with.” He died in March 2023.
I met Sora in New York forward of the film’s theatrical launch and practically 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 advised me that it’s about two pals who drift aside as one turns into politically acutely 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 come back out first, however these issues you may’t actually assist or management an excessive amount of,” Sora mentioned. “I’ve at all times simply needed folks to know me only for one thing I do individually from my father.”
Regardless of being the director of Opus, Sora is reluctant to assert authorship over it. “I used to be attempting to be a conduit for no matter he needed to do, and I believe what he needed to do was a live performance,” Sora mentioned.
Although most of the decisions — the idea, location, items — could have been Sakamoto’s, it’s onerous to disregard Sora’s refined hand all through Opus. For what was at all times meant to be the ultimate efficiency from a unprecedented artist, the movie doesn’t really feel like a somber affair. Whilst Sakamoto struggles to complete sure items, his fingers not what they as soon as have been, the power draining from his ailing physique, there’s a sense of triumph every time a tune reaches its closing 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 likewise greater than that.
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is in theaters now and can ultimately stream on the Criterion Channel.
