garethcrook

If you've not watched Opus yet or are about to, hit pause and watch Coda first if you've not already. The documentary gives a really wonderful broad introduction to Sakamoto and his work, before you sit down to appreciate what's happening here. This is a concert film. His final performance before his passing in 2023. He'd not toured or played for years on account of the cancer diagnosis. Opus is the very definition of a defiant last goodbye. Shot in Japan in beautifully crisp black and white. Just him and the piano, it's very intimate. No audience, the viewer gets their own personal concert with the very best seat in the house, often sat right next to Sakamoto. It's beautifully shot, but you can close your eyes and still appreciate Opus. It's the music after all where the magic lies. Watching him play though is a treat. The way he moves, the hand motions as he orchestrates the pianos sustain at the end of a song. Repositioning his glasses or retuning the piano, adding a metallic reverb to the strings. The poignant moments when he takes a break, inaudibly talking to someone off camera as he catches his breath from a cough. Capturing work like this is not easy, but here it seems effortless. It's a beautiful piece of work, lovingly put together by his son Neo Sora. A fitting finale.

8/10.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster and the tsunami that followed, Ryuichi Sakamoto tracks down a piano that although a little water damaged, survived. "I felt as though I was playing the corpse of a piano that drowned". He's against nuclear, not just weapons, but power. That's not something we hear about much in the U. K., but then we've not had a meltdown on home turf. It may seem like a random start, but it's context and that's what Coda does well, paints a picture of events and influences that Sakamoto draws on. There's plenty of piano here, but the two big topics are his love and admiration of nature and is his cancer diagnosis that's now driving him to continue creating. Be it film scoring or a new record, one that was put on hold with the diagnosis. He knows the clock is ticking and wants to leave behind "meaningful work". Sadly the clock has stopped now, which makes watching this a little mournful. Especially with the candid shots of him taking medication and brushing his teeth. It's magical watching him experiment though. Recording foley sounds of nature out in forests. Matching them with strings in the studio, a common theme of nature and man working with and against each other. Leafing through Tarkovsky photo books, recording the rain hitting windows, standing outside with a bucket on his head. When he smiles at what he's creating, it's emotional. Pure joy. Along with the present day circa 2017, there's more of that context, with his 80s kitsch pop star phase and of course the famous 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence', from the film that I didn't realise he also starred in. He has quite a list of credits, both as actor and composer. It's his story in his voice. Traveling the world, a love letter to nature and its influence. That's what Coda tries to capture. A career perspective, in his final chapter.

I've just watched the documentary We Were Once Kids about the making of Kids. I've not watched this since its release, but it's now time to revisit it with fresh eyes and more context. If you've not seen Kids. It follows a bunch of teenagers in 90s NYC, over the course of a hot summers day in a documentary style. Style is the important word there. The handheld chaotic camera makes this feel real. It's not, but there's truth in every lie as they say. It's scripted, everyone's acting, but they're all first timers mostly playing themselves. The drugs are real, the booze is real. Drugs, booze, I thought this was about kids? Therein lies some of the warranted controversy. We open with Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) trying to sweet talk his virgin girlfriend into having sex. It's awkward and uncomfortable. Telly is not in love, he just wants to have sex. He's a scrawny, vile and obnoxious prick. As is his mate Casper (Justin Pierce), who gets all the sordid details as they laugh about it, walking down the street drinking out of a brown paper bag as the city is waking up. Honestly though, everyone's pretty wild. As we meet Jennie (Chloë Sevigny) and Ruby (Rosario Dawson), they're discussing with a group of girlfriends how they lost their virginity and how much they love sex. It's the focus of everything. Sex, drugs, sex, booze, sex, skating, sex. Telly's going around screwing anyone he can. What he doesn't know is, Jennie, who he's slept with before has just found out she's HIV Positive. This is what made Kids shocking when I saw it as an 18 year old. We'd grown up with the AIDS adverts on TV, we knew to be careful. Watching this scumbag on the screen with no respect for himself or anyone else was genuinely chilling. It still is. It's like a horror. If this were an underground film that stayed that way, maybe it'd be different, but there's something in it breaking out as a mainstream hit that makes it all the more disturbing. These kids have no discipline and no parents around to enforce any. They're ferrel. It's a pretty depressing watch, full of misogyny, homophobia, rape and squalor. Honestly it's worst watching it now, 30 years on. Essentially it comes down to Jennie spending the film searching for Telly before he sleeps with anyone else, but her day gets even worse before that happens. Despite the unsavoury narrative, dialogue, concept, it's oddly captivating. You feel like you shouldn't be watching it. It's really difficult to get a handle on. After my second viewing I can only say that despite its undeniable innovative nature. It's a horrible film and I hate it. It's only redeeming traits, that it launched a couple of half decent careers. Although it's telling that most of the cast and creators went on to very little or nothing. It's depressing, it's nasty, if you want to know how nasty. Pretend you're in New Zealand and watch the documentary.