Included in the musical selections are some numbers that Sakamoto hadn’t previously performed as solo piano arrangements, like “The Wuthering Heights” (composed as the theme for the 1992 film). There are new arrangements of old songs, such as “Tong Poo,” which was first released as a single from the 1978 synth-pop debut album of Sakamoto’s band, Yellow Magic Orchestra. And there are familiar favorites, especially “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,” composed for the 1983 film, in which Sakamoto also starred alongside David Bowie.
But for me, the songs aren’t the point of “Opus.” The camerawork, performance, lighting and music all add up to something larger than their individual parts. One audible element is Sakamoto’s use of the pedals, which on a grand piano have different purposes, all designed to alter the life and timbre of the note.
You can hear Sakamoto’s quiet pedaling throughout, and that made me start thinking about the relationship of time to the music itself. A piano is two kinds of instrument in one, a percussive and a stringed instrument. Small hammers strike the steel strings, causing them to reverberate, and the sound is amplified by the body of the piano. (At one point, Sakamoto manipulates some strings with small pins, causing an entirely different sound to come out of the instrument.) The length of a note is determined by how long the string is permitted to vibrate — but every note will, eventually, die off, a natural process of physics taking its course.
In a movie like “Opus,” that takes on a new meaning. Sakamoto’s career stretched nearly 45 years, and its resonance is broad, echoing across genres and generations. Musicians inspired by Sakamoto’s work now make their own music. In a sense, his mind and his ear will vibrate for a long time.
Some people say that after death, you lurk around earth as a ghost until the last person to know you dies, and your memory disappears completely. That seems related to the way a piano works: Even after the finger moves off the piano key, the string thrums with fading sound until it’s stilled and forgotten. At the very end of “Opus,” the piano plays, the keys depressing in turn, but Sakamoto himself is gone. His music, it suggests, is what lives on.
The final words to appear on the screen in the film are “Ars Longa, Vita Brevis.” Art is long; life is short. For those with generational talent, one outlives the other. And art — like “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” and the performance in it — is what ultimately preserves the memory of the artist.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus
Not rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.
Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.
