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Among the inspirations recognized by the eternally curious subject of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda are the Bach organ choruses, the films and photographs of Andrei Tarkovsky, the spoken words of Paul Bowles and J. Robert Oppenheimer and a range of environmental sounds collected from firsthand from places as far away as a polar circle glacier or Lake Turkana, Kenya, where the world's oldest human remains have been discovered. Performed over a five-year period during which the Japanese composer was diagnosed and treated for stage 3 throat cancer, it is a gentle and thoughtful portrait that rarely becomes personal and yet quite frank
. documentary, Sakamoto is seen in a high school in northeastern Japan, tinkering with a Yamaha baby who survived the 2011 tsunami. "I felt like I was playing the corpse of a piano that s'. is drowned, "he says.
While observing the devastation in the region, he puts on a Hazmat suit and visits the restricted area of contamination of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. a mbadive demonstration outside the prime minister's residence in Tokyo when the factories are reopened. The film then goes to Sakamoto by visiting a shrine in memory of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami and playing in a recital on a former evacuation site, playing an exquisite arrangement for piano, violin and cello of his theme melodious of Nagisa Oshima Christmas, Mr. Lawrence .
All that is packed into the pre-title section of the film, establishing its subject as a humanitarian activist, socially engaged, while touching upon a single notable achievement of its influential and vast five-decade career in music. It also serves to illustrate how factors such as environmental crises, nuclear energy, global warming, the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the war in Iraq have directly fueled his work over the past 25 years.
Sakamoto may seem serious and serious deep in concentration a minute, then funny and impressed with childlike pleasure next. The androgynous beauty of his early years is spotted in a sweeping panorama after a Warhol portrait or clip of him appearing in front of David Bowie in the 1983 movie Oshima. But at age 65, his beauty is no less striking , with its mop of silver hair, owl glbades and a cool wardrobe of neutral tones. Even his medications are arranged on an elegant linen napkin, while his health-conscious fruit meal is arranged with the harmonious balance of a piece of art.
All this aesthetic attention to detail may seem like a pose, but it seems rather integral to the man and the artist. While Sakamoto never talks about his marriages, relationships or children, his frankness about his creative process is remarkably enlightening. By observing him collecting sounds in a forest, or trying different vessels to catch rainy raindrops outside his door in Tokyo (he splits his time between Japan and New York), there is a moving feeling of 39, be left in a very intimate part of the artist. job. These insights are as much a Sakamoto's vision as her direct account of her diagnosis of cancer and her post-treatment prospects
Nomura Schible shows little interest in conventional biographical details or the strict chronology of careers. The documentary does not claim to be exhaustive either. And there are no one-on-one comments with famous collaborators; Sakamoto himself is the only one interviewed. Yet, out of the film, the discursive structure, an expanded vision of the eclectic production of the subject, and the thought that goes into each new play, come together.
Special attention is paid to his synth-pop years in the end The '70s and early' 80s were part of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, an avant-garde ensemble that was a forerunner of Daft Punk and other electronic groups. Appropriate excerpts and anecdotes illustrate his work on film scores, including Bernardo Bertolucci The Last Emperor (who won Sakamoto an Oscar) and The Sheltering Sky ; and Alejandro G. Iñárritu The Revenant for which he admits to having ended his cancer treatment stoppage to collaborate with a director whom he admires. There are also beautiful archive footage of the youngest Sakamoto who directs key films, intelligently intertwined by the publisher Hisayo Kushida with scenes in which they were used.
Some of the most beautiful moments of the documentary are in Sakamoto's home studio. computer console, superimposing disparate elements into dense and mesmerizing soundscapes, but always returning to the piano as the center of his work.
By examining the different parts of his Steinway, he speaks with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a craftsman on how the components of nature are subjected to a long process of industrial technology to build a piano. And how the "tsunami piano" – whose notes are incorporated in some of his recent choral pieces – in a strange sense reverses this process. Coming from an artist now accustomed to contemplate his mortality, this sighting has a mesmerizing resonance .– The Hollywood Reporter
Click here for cast and crew information.
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