Max Richter’s Sleep

Max Richter’s work, even at its most expan­sive, is inward-look­ing and unafraid to oper­ate from a place of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. This was per­son­i­fied by the influ­en­tial con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal composer’s 2015 record ​‘Sleep’, an eight-hour con­cept album which is built around var­i­ous tonal shifts that synch to the fre­quen­cies on which the human brain oper­ates while we sleep.

Richter even con­ferred with neu­ro­sci­en­tist David Eagle­man to ensure his music could leave an impres­sion on its lis­ten­ers while they snoozed, with each of the Suites designed to be expe­ri­enced while in both con­scious and uncon­scious states. This doc­u­men­tary from direc­tor Nathalie Johns delves even deep­er into the cre­ation of ​‘Sleep’ and its unique song cycle – it trans­ports us to one of Richter’s pio­neer­ing live shows in Los Ange­les, where every con­cert­go­er is giv­en their own bed to expe­ri­ence the album as it’s played in its entire­ty from dusk through to dawn.

At a time when the world appears to be tee­ter­ing on the edge of calami­ty, swing­ing vio­lent­ly from one dis­as­trous news event to the next, there’s some­thing cleans­ing and ther­a­peu­tic about this film, par­tic­u­lar­ly the way in which it pri­ori­tis­es the con­cept of tak­ing time for your­self. Richter describes ​‘Sleep’ as being a ​“qui­et protest” designed to help peo­ple ​“step off the wheel and take stock.” This does hap­pen to con­ve­nient­ly mir­ror much of the philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion­ing and inte­ri­or thought that has been a direct result of the pro­longed, hiber­na­tion-like Coro­n­avirus lockdown.

Even though this film exists in a world before social dis­tanc­ing, it embraces the idea of mov­ing away from the over­ly-com­pli­cat­ed trap­pings of glob­al­i­sa­tion and this cre­ates a pow­er­ful pre­science. Beyond this meta-com­men­tary, it also works as a three-dimen­sion­al account of Richter’s dri­ve to rad­i­cal­ly alter the con­ven­tions of pop­u­lar music, whether through how it’s played live or record­ed in the stu­dio. ​“I don’t want peo­ple to just lis­ten to ​‘Sleep’, I want them to expe­ri­ence it like a land­scape. They should be inside of it,” the musi­cian, who abides by a near-sci­en­tif­ic atten­tion to detail, pow­er­ful­ly explains at one point.

One obvi­ous weak­ness of the film is the over-used reflec­tions from peo­ple in the LA crowd, which can some­times veer into indul­gent ter­ri­to­ry. Anoth­er crit­i­cism, per­haps, is that beyond insist­ing this expe­ri­ence is over­whelm­ing­ly med­i­ta­tive, there doesn’t seem to be much hunger to probe the idea that Richter’s con­cept could in fact exac­er­bate our fears of los­ing con­trol of our bod­ies, or even be seen by some as a gimmick.

Yet in a world where so many of us are hap­py to be led and defined by tech­nol­o­gy, the way this film explores the idea of how con­trol can be chan­nelled into some­thing more pos­i­tive, is fas­ci­nat­ing. Even though live shows might be off the cards until 2021, Johns’ film, which has a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry feel to its cin­e­matog­ra­phy and pac­ing, sug­gests Richter may have unearthed a new dawn for com­mu­nal, music-led expe­ri­ences. The film­mak­er and her sub­ject are acute­ly aware that there’s nev­er been a bet­ter time to switch off and be still.