Opus review – gor­geous doc­u­ment of a supreme artist

The incred­i­ble com­pos­er, pianist, and envi­ron­men­tal activist Ryuichi Sakamo­to passed away ear­li­er this year, on 28 March, 2023. Filmed over a week in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Sakamo­to record­ed a few songs a day at NHK 509 in Japan – a stu­dio long beloved by the com­pos­er – strain­ing against his ill health. The result is Ryuichi Sakamo­to | Opus, a stun­ning con­cert film direct­ed by his son, Neo Sora, and cap­tured in con­tem­pla­tive black-and-white by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Bill Kirstein. It was to be Sakamoto’s last performance.

For what he knew might be his swan­song, Sakamo­to select­ed 20 pieces span­ning his illus­tri­ous career. There’s ​‘Lack of Love’, a part-elec­tron­ic track here ren­dered entire­ly acoustic; a new, slowed ver­sion of the jubi­lant ​‘Tong Poo’; his BAF­TA-win­ning theme for Nag­isa Ōshima’s 1983 film Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence. To hear Sakamoto’s music is to open one’s body and soul to his inim­itable gift for draw­ing out great beau­ty from seem­ing­ly the sim­plest of arrange­ments. His music was often min­i­mal­ist in the way that poet­ry is: uni­vers­es of mean­ing with­in phras­es that only a great mind would know to string together.

A con­cert is ephemer­al; one is filled with grat­i­tude that this film is not. Kirstein’s atten­tive yet nev­er intru­sive cam­era ele­gant­ly frames Sakamoto’s face – that famil­iar shock of white hair and tor­toise­shell glass­es. It stud­ies his hands’ assured touch of the keys; glides slow­ly across the stu­dio floor in a wide shot that reveals a for­est of tall micro­phones all around the stu­dio, ful­ly cap­tur­ing the audio-spa­tial dimen­sions of Sakamoto’s geo­gra­phies of sound. This plays in tan­dem with Yukiko Yoshimoto’s beau­ti­ful­ly curat­ed light­ing design, evolv­ing to sub­tly mir­ror the emo­tion­al con­tours of each piece.

Sakamo­to and his instru­ment are var­i­ous­ly shroud­ed in dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions of light and dark, black and white, much like piano keys. One breath­tak­ing shot towards the end of the film is lit over­head such that the black of the piano’s body and Sakamoto’s clothes melts into dark­ness; only his face and the strings and ham­mers of the piano, reflect­ed in its open lid, are vis­i­ble. The bor­der between man and instru­ment appears to dissolve.

Sound design is of course impor­tant here: beyond the tech­ni­cal­ly excel­lent acoustics of this set-up, micro­phones posi­tioned close to the sheet music rest­ing on the piano and Sakamoto’s foot on the ped­al cre­ate a del­i­cate inti­ma­cy with the per­former. We hear his intakes of breath, that musician’s apos­tro­phe where silence is sud­den­ly replaced with sound. We even hear the piano ped­al being depressed and lift­ed, the rus­tle of sheet music between songs.

It’s hard not to feel like Sakamo­to is in the room with you. At the screen­ing I attend­ed, some­one in the audi­ence was moved to call out ​“Bra­vo!” at the con­clu­sion of one piece. The rest of us sub­se­quent­ly broke into applause. By coin­ci­dence, this too was where Sakamo­to takes a small shud­der­ing breath, and says qui­et­ly, ​“Can I take a break? This is tough, I’m push­ing myself.” For all the film’s immense beau­ty, it is dev­as­tat­ing to think that Sakamo­to was know­ing­ly play­ing this music for the last time. How did he bear it?

The last piece he plays is ​‘Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence’. Those ini­tial sparkling, clear notes of its motif, so recog­nis­able and dev­as­tat­ing, float like iri­des­cent droplets sus­pend­ed in the air. Sakamoto’s face creas­es with feel­ing, as if on the verge of tears. The end cred­its are accom­pa­nied but an out­ro piece fit­ting­ly titled ​‘Opus’. The cam­era frames Sakamo­to in the bot­tom right of the screen, with a per­fect­ly dis­tanced full body shot to make it look like he and his piano are right there on stage with us in the cin­e­ma. We clap and clap. He dis­ap­pears, but the piano plays on.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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