When news of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s death last March was announced, the world bid a loving farewell to one of its most influential and innovative figures yet. A pioneer of early synth-pop, his innovative use of synthesizers and drum machines in the late 70’s and early 80’s changed music indefinitely. Spawning a list of incredible contemporaries larger than I can ever wrap my head around, it’s undoubtedly safe to say the music would not have the same without him
In his final moments, Sakamoto turned to filmmaker Neo Sora, (who just so happens to be his son) to aid him in crafting his final farewell to the world. And thus, “Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus” was spawned. Filmed over an eight day period in the fall of 2022 at NHK Studio in Tokyo, Neo guides us through a beautifully haunting journey of Sakamoto’s lush musical career, allowing us to witness the intimate showcase of a man losing himself to his music one last time.
Last month, I sat down with Neo Sora to ask him more about the making of the film and what it meant to him.
[Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
In the early stages of Opus, did your father have a prenotion of what he wanted to do and did he reach out to you to create the film? Or was it more of a mutual decision?
Yeah, so basically he and his team were thinking about doing some kind of thing while he was healthy enough to do it. And I had been kind of working on a separate project, my own film project at the time, but they reached out to me like, you know we’re not really sure when he’ll be able to do this. But if we don’t do it now, he could go downhill at any time, so would you please do it? I didn’t want to regret not doing something, so I decided to of course.
And I know you picked the tracklist with him. The songs that went into it, they seemed very particular. What was that process like?
I was trying to have a degree of separation of responsibility about the music and the filmmaking. For the music, it was his domain. He chose the 20 songs, gave that to me, and I was trying to craft the film around that. But then there was a moment at which point I told him my intention behind the concept of the aesthetic of the film, which is to represent change of light over the course of a day. And once I told him that, he actually rearranged some of the songs to fit that idea a little bit better.
I want to ask about the choice to present Opus all in such a stripped down way. The imagery is shot in black and white and performed only with piano. Sakamoto is well known as this godfather of synth pop, with such an electronically vibrant presence in all of his work. So I guess, is there a reason why you chose to get rid of all of that?
So yeah, it kind of goes back to what I was saying before in terms of letting the music be his domain. And ultimately, that’s just what he wanted to do. And so I didn’t really have too much of a say in that, nor did I want to have a say in that. There are some songs in the setlist that originally were synth or electronic, so I was very interested in how he arranged it to an acoustic piano.
I mean, kind of backing up a little bit, his musical training was in piano composition. But I think he’s always been really skeptical of the western-centric notion of classical music and the piano as an object of industrialism in a way. All these things he’s been really critical about.
In college, I think, in grad school, he was studying ethnomusicology. So when the synth started to be available as a technology, he was really interested in its capabilities that would allow him to go beyond the western classical way of making music. I think he was not just focused on harnessing electric technology, but focused on expanding the notion of what music can accomplish and the possibility of music.
But piano always was by his side as his most familiar tool to make music. He had a love and hate relationship with the piano, right? So I think in the end he came back to the piano as the thing that was by his side the longest. But he was really interested in the kind sounds of the piano that weren’t just the notes of the piano, but the tones that the piano would make as it was decaying, or the harmonic frequencies, or the percussive sounds of the piano as an object. You know, all these different aspects of the piano he was really interested in. And I think for songs like “Tong Poo”, which was originally a WMO song (YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, Sakamoto’s techno-pop trio before the launch of his solo career), we arranged it for the piano to kind of allow for this sequence where he’s just playing this kind of arpeggiated treble clef arpeggio over and over again. And by doing so, the piano starts to create these harmonic frequencies that ring really in the high register. And to him, I think that really sounded electronic in a way. So I think he was trying to bring back in the spirit of electronics through the piano.
But you know, I don’t know really… I never fully asked the reason why he only did piano for the last one.
I noticed some of that change with tracks like “Bibo no Aozora”. The version of that song on Smoochie (his 8th album, and my personal favorite) is so decadent, but I realized that the bridge section in Opus is played differently. It’s also that section of the song where he messes up his performance and stops to repeat it. Why did you choose that song in particular to leave in an imperfect version? I love that moment but you only do it once.
I think that song always has this improv section, and I think he generally likes to use that improv section to do whatever he wants for each performance of it. And yeah, I guess in this particular instance of it, as he was performing the improv, he just didn’t like what he ended up doing. But I think it’s kind of interesting because the mistake almost allows him to be freer. So to me, seeing him kind of… feel unleashed to do whatever the hell he wants as if he were kind of just like in the studio, like fucking around figuring out the song, was more interesting to show.
I wanted to ask why you’ve labeled Opus as less of a documentary and more of a concert film? It’s obviously so different from other documentaries on Sakamoto, like “Tokyo Melody” or “Coda”, but I don’t know… my instinct is to disagree with that. I came into this film with a very surface level understanding of his character and his presence and left feeling very informed. There is just so much visual narrative within it. But at the same time, it is just a performance piece. Nothing’s being explicitly said.
So I, in reality, am very much in agreement with you that it’s maybe like a purer form of a documentary in a way. And I do think you actually get a narrative of his life. And it’s kind of interesting to me that you didn’t really know him that well and you still felt that because the overall response that I’ve been getting from Opus is that for people who don’t know him, they want more of a hook or a hint to understand him better. And for the people who really know him well, they can access the difference with which he plays this music compared to his other. And it’s a bit of a shame. Both of those responses to me, I’m like, you know, I get it. But I feel like if a viewer is just open to the experience of seeing minute detail of expression, then even if you don’t know him at all, you’ll actually get a long story that’s being told to you. But I think inevitably because there’s only very few kind of industry genres of how films are built to people, it ends up being grouped in with documentaries.
Especially with marketing films.
Exactly. It’s kind of a marketing thing, right? It’s very unfortunate that we have this very low resolution way that we get to market films. And people have a very low resolution understanding of what a documentary is, I think. And when people hear documentaries, I think a lot of people expect going into it, a film that will teach them something, right? And hold your hand through a story that’s broken down for you in a way that’s digestible, or a way that’s well defined.
And, you know, what I’m trying to do is kind of… almost counter that expectation a little bit so that people will come into the movie and let it just wash over them. Personally, I don’t have a lot of experience with watching movies in that mode, but I’m starting.
But I also totally do understand that there are people who aren’t used to that kind of mode of watching a film. And so in order to temper that expectation a little bit, to get people to come into the movie with a certain type of expectation, I have been calling it that way, so I’m glad you disagree with me.
I got a lot from it.
That makes me very happy.
After finishing Opus, I really started getting into his music. One of the things it’s revealed to me is that I actually really like pop music. There’s a lot of horrible pop music out there, but his stuff… I don’t know. It just taught me how much I value that sound. Recently, I’ve been listening to his music with Miki Nakatani. It’s crazy. It’s the best. It’s like altruist pop music. And it seems like, not just with her, but with everyone, l feel his biggest strength is as a collaborator. So I guess what I’m trying to ask is, what are the values you found through working on a project alongside him?
I totally agree with you in terms of the pop sensibility. Something that I wasn’t really able to articulate until I finished the film, about him and his music is… I think he’s a composer and musician that always kept bouncing in between two conflicting poles that he held inside of him. And I totally understand that conflict inside. I think that conflict was very much present in the film and all of his music as well.
To me, my favorite songs that he has composed in the past, always almost miraculously blends those two poles together in a really seamless way. But then there are lots of songs that either go in one direction or the other direction. And the main two poles that I’m thinking about are sentimentality and intellectualism. And I think on one hand he’s like a very logical and intellectual analyst of composition and music, where he can understand a structure, understand how music is created, and be able to replicate that really well and very meticulously. And he also understands, intellectually, the pitfalls of these western-centric modes of composition, pop, all sorts of things like that.
And then on the other hand, I think he just has this melodramatic sentimentality to him that is an uncontrollable, sappy little guy that just cries when he watches melodramatic films or whatever. He loves the Beatles, he loved the Rolling Stones, he loves Michael Jackson, a lot of the city pop influence comes from Marvin Gaye.
And he has these two poles, and I think there are some songs that lean too heavily on this side, and there are some songs that are like totally impenetrable, and like kind of bad to be honest, because they’re too theory forward. But then every so often, there’s like one or two songs in each album, in my opinion, that really just happen to completely combine both roles in a really beautiful way. Actually, I think a lot of the music in Opus ended up being that.
But that tension between those two things, the tension between his Eastern influences and Western European influences, like all these kinds of contradictions that he holds within himself, that’s his music. That’s what he creates music out of. And to me that’s really interesting.
And I realized that, I wasn’t able to articulate this before, but I think in doing all of this I realized that that is the essence of his music, it’s like these contradictions all held together at once, or tried to.
I heard somewhere that he hated restaurant playlists, and that he was notoriously annoyed by them. Has that translated hereditarily? Like does this music peeve you right now?
Now that you’ve mentioned it, I think I’m a little bit more accepting (laughs) or I’ve given up I guess.