Sakamoto is particularly passionate when analyzing the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s use of Bach, water, wind and footsteps in “Solaris.” Bertolucci made him rewrite a section of the score on the fly while a 40-member orchestra waited - but part of what’s exciting about “Coda” is that it increases your appreciation for Mr. Sakamoto recalls how, on “The Sheltering Sky,” Mr. Most behind-the-scenes documentaries have their share of dishy anecdotes - Mr. Iñárritu’s “The Revenant,” an assignment he accepted while battling throat cancer.
Sakamoto shares memories of composing music for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” and is shown writing the score for Alejandro G. (“I felt as if I was playing the corpse of a piano that had drowned,” he says.) He later admits it took him time to appreciate that piano’s sound.Ī wry and genial subject, with a wispy crop of white hair, Mr.
Coda ryuichi sakamoto movie#
He visits the Fukushima contamination site and, as the movie opens, plays a piano that survived the 2011 Japanese tsunami damaged but intact. His environmental activism is presented as a function of his art. Sakamoto intellectually, but also share a sense of the excitement he feels when discovering just the right match of sounds. The creative process is notoriously difficult to capture on camera, but by the end of this documentary, you will feel as if you not only understand Mr. Sakamoto’s embrace of both, runs throughout “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda,” an uncommonly engaging artist portrait from Stephen Nomura Schible. The conflict between industrial and natural elements, and Mr. When the instrument’s tuning goes awry, it means “matter is struggling to return to a natural state.” “We humans say it falls out of tune, but that’s not exactly accurate,” Mr. Machinery presses wood and strings into shape. Discussing the components of a piano, he explains how, since the industrial revolution, pianos have been made possible by imposition of civilization on nature. More than halfway through the documentary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda,” the Japanese pianist and composer offers an insight that captures the tension at the heart of his art.