Even
if you are not familiar with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto or Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (starring
David Bowie) you will probably recognize “Forbidden Colours,” which he wrote
for the soundtrack. A vocal version even charted in the UK. It is unusual when
a classical-ambient piece develops such a life of its own, but it is even rarer
still for such a cerebral composer to attain rock star status. Stephen Nomura
Schible documents the composer at a pivotal juncture in his life—commencing
work on score for The Revenant after
enduring successful cancer treatment—in Ryuichi
Sakamoto: Coda (trailer
here),
which had its North American premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
You
can think of Sakamoto as a Japanese David Byrne, but with stronger orchestral
chops. He won an Oscar for The Last Emperor,
a BAFTA for Mr. Lawrence, and a
Golden Globe for The Sheltering Sky. He
also scored Little Buddha, Takashi
Miike’s Hara-Kiri, a couple of De
Palma misfires, and the Binoche-Fiennes Wuthering
Heights. His music is particularly well-suited to grandly operatic canvasses,
but he still releases his own albums. However, his fight against cancer understandably
slowed him down.
During
the early scenes of Coda, Sakamoto
still tires easily. Nevertheless, he has returned to work on both the Revenant score and a Paul Bowles concept
album he shelved years ago. Around about the second act, Sakamoto renews his
commitment to the Japanese anti-nuclear campaign, newly invigorated in the wake
of Fukushima. At rallies, Sakamoto advocates a complete ban on nuclear power
throughout Japan, yet he never suggests where the rolling blackouts should start
each day or how long they should last. Seriously, it is absolutely impossible
for Japan to do former without instituting the latter.
Be
that as it undeniably is, there is great poignancy in Sakamoto’s spiritual journey
into the exclusionary zone, both to bear witness in general and to search for a
battered but intact piano that reportedly survived the devastation, taking on
mythic significance as a result.
Throughout
Coda, Schbile clearly tailors his
style to Sakamoto’s aesthetic. Frankly, it is exactly like what you would
expect a Sakamoto doc should be. It often looks and not infrequently sounds
like ECM albums (which he, like Byrne, should have an affinity for). It is also
fascinating to hear a composer of Sakamoto’s stature talk so candidly about his
creative process. In fact, it would have been an even stronger film if there
were more of Sakamoto on music and less of Sakamoto on nuclear power.
