KT Bonus Edition: The Ryuichi Sakamoto retrospective at ACMI
We give you some background info on the techno-pop pioneer / activist / maestro's incredible career.
ACMI’s Focus on Ryuichi Sakamoto
Screening at ACMI from Thu Apr 4 to Sun Apr 21. Tickets here
Words by Austin Lancaster
Ryuichi Sakamoto, the gifted multi-instrumentalist, composer, electronic pioneer, and activist, died last year on March 28. To honour Sakamoto’s incredible decade spanning career, ACMI have curated a retrospective of works related to the late maestro. Spearheaded by Sakamoto’s final performance in Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, the program spans music videos with his techno-pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, some of his most iconic films, a documentary about his activism and a curious video art piece.
In Yellow Magic Orchestra’s (YMO) debut music video “Theme from The Circus” we are presented with a series of images that confound cultural designations. The three Japanese band members (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, and Yukihiro Takahasi) are fixed in robotic poses wearing Mao-like suits with a red colour - a suggestion of China - but their hues soon begin to change to bright emerald, purple, indigo, cyan. Bouncing PONG-like across an arcade screen is their emblematic self-titled album cover: a woman clad in traditional kimono and fan, but with huge bug-eyed glasses and Medusa-like cables sprouting from her head. The “theme” we hear is an assemblage of arcade bleeps and bloops, increasingly cacophonous and joined by an incongruous disco drum beat.
“You have to be surprised, you have to be fresh. Anything can be music,” Sakamoto spoke these words in the last decade of his life, and they are fitting, as this sense of open-eared discovery was a central principle that guided his fluid, adventurous career. His musical output began with his Herbie Hancock-Debussy-synth fantasia album Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto and ended with Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (2023), a stripped-down performance of his best known tunes on solo piano, made with the knowledge that it would be his last. The kitschy techno-pop of YMO, to which Sakamoto lent his keyboard and orchestration talents, was originally conceived by Hosono as a one-off joke. In tracks such as "Tong Poo" (which will be screened as part of a free half-hour showcase of YMO videos) bright futuristic textures mixed with traditional sounds and Hollywood exotica, playfully satirising both orientalist confusions and Japanese anxieties about an “authentic” national identity.
The western stylistic innovations of Krautrock, dub, ambient and New Age were all digested and built upon in a musical approach that testified to a freedom of apprehension about cultural exchange. Later his musical cartography opened up further, to include popular styles from places such as Africa and Indonesia. He expressed a belief that understanding a culture’s backgrounds wasn’t necessary to interface with them musically: “I like error, it leads to re-creation”. Where his YMO band-mate Hosono’s “sightseeing” idea of music-making was like a tourist’s document of a foreign culture’s sights and sounds, Sakamoto’s global collaborations and fusions seemed to be reaching for a synthetic language that could transcend borders - realised beautifully in solo albums such as the freewheeling Beauty, and the aptly named sample-fest Esperanto.
An intriguing inclusion in the program is All-Star Video (1984), a half-hour video art collaboration between Sakamoto and multimedia visionary Nam June Paik, who shared with Sakamoto both a global orientation and an ear for the cutting edge. The work highlights various figures and goings-on in the New York avant-garde scene in a rapid-fire collage of distorted video material. Existing material by Paik is hyperactively remixed along with interviews and tributary footage of Sakamoto (who shares a directing credit and provided original music). There is a recurring motif of radical re-imagining of traditional instruments. Charlotte Moorman performs with various absurd reconfigured “cellos”: a man’s back with a string attached is bowed and plucked; next she ventriloquizes “The Swan” on two TV sets stacked on top each other. Stan Van der Beek's “Violence Sonata” chops, screws and superimposes video footage of a grand piano being hacked apart by a pickaxe. In a silent piece that dispenses with music altogether, John Cage records environmental sounds at randomly chosen locations around Manhattan, "assuming the entire island is, so to speak, a concert hall.".
This desire to push beyond acoustic instruments can also be found in much of Sakamoto’s own work. Though a classically trained pianist, he quickly embraced the synthesiser, evidently interested in its ersatz, imitative possibilities for their own sake. In Sakamoto's film score for Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), prisoners walk to a square-wave synth tone that sounds strangely similar to and yet not entirely like a bugle. The gamelan-like timbre of the film’s beloved title melody was achieved by feeding the sound of wine glasses being tapped into a keyboard-controlled sampler. That this tender, meditative theme first drops right after a POW’s dome is split open by a bamboo strike is strange in its effect, yet somehow appropriate given the film’s sadomasochistic overtones and transmogrified emotions.
Sakamoto, who was given complete freedom by its director Nagisa Ōshima, has retrospectively spoken of his dissatisfaction with the way the music stands out and creates dissonance with the images. But these tensions help achieve Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’s best quality - its lurid unearthliness. The Java-located POW camp setting becomes a heightened, humid heterocosm where unspeakable desires of different kinds play out for its characters. This quality is also abetted by the startling beauty of its lead actors: David Bowie and a young Sakamoto himself, adorned with rogue and kabuki eyeliner in the role of the camp’s incandescent commander. Sakamoto's face, initially still and purse-mouthed, memorably threatens to split apart in its first confrontation with Bowie's blonde visage, his lips and eyes constantly readjusting as if struggling to resist hypnosis.
Sakamoto’s gift for melody is also prominent in his string-heavy contributions to two films for Bernardo Bertolucci, a filmmaker with a penchant for lush, sensual surfaces. The Sheltering Sky (1990), a Paul Bowles adaptation, is an illness-abroad narrative set in North Africa in the vein of Death in Venice and Heart of Darkness, dominated by earthy oranges. (Another comparison that comes to mind is Hosono’s album Cochin Moon, on which Sakamoto performed, a delirious documentation of a stomach illness contracted during a month-long trip to India). The Last Emperor (1987) stunningly dramatises the life of Puyi, sheltered from childhood as a puppet-ruler inside the Forbidden City until caught up in the tumult of Chinese revolution and Japanese imperial ambition. The decadent world of strange ceremony inside the city is scored by Sakamoto with Chinese folk instruments such as the guzheng and dizi flute, while a yearning theme played by western string ensemble conveys Puyi’s anguished drive to escape its walls.
As time went on, political consciousness became more important to Sakamoto’s work. In the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017), we see him playing on a piano damaged by the tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear accident, as well as lending his voice to anti-nuclear demonstrations. Awe before the devastating power of nature is central to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2015), scored by Sakamoto along with frequent collaborator Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner, whose enlisting became necessary due to Sakamoto’s illness with cancer. The breathtaking starkness of the wild Canadian mountains is evoked by Sakamoto’s symphonic swells, an expansive counterweight in a film that for much of its length fixes the viewer within the visceral subjectivity of its protagonist’s struggle for survival and revenge. In his thinking about environmentalism Sakamoto advocated for a Promethean fear: “Civilisations can be easily destroyed by a tremor that is just a little sneeze from nature’s perspective… We are only allowed to live on its palms.”
Sakamoto’s skirmishes with death no doubt weighed heavily towards the end of his life. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, a lynchpin for the program, mixes archival footage with privileged access to his home as he works on async, his first album since his diagnosis. Happily, Sakamoto’s words and music are allowed to speak for themselves, and through mock-ups and unused material we get a sense of his musical thought in process. He has a renewed interest in the spiritual films of Andrei Tarkovsky, speaking (in an echo of Cage’s silences) of the Soviet auteur’s “profound respect for the sound of things”. In interviews around this time it seemed Sakamoto had been bargaining with death, speaking of the shock of his diagnosis and a desire to reach for an "eternal" sound. In Opus, the palpable limitations of his body are once again central to the text. The performance, directed by his son, is lit to suggest the movement of the sun over the course of a day. As he plays, copious black-and-white close-ups examine a physicality that has noticeably changed, his face thinner and spottier, his effort heavy.
Far from unchanging, Sakamoto's musical life was one of flux, born of a patient openness to inspiration. In Coda we witness a repeated occurrence: Sakamoto's face lit up, registering surprise at a new sonic discovery. Archival footage of a trip to Antarctica shows him "fishing for sound", recording the crystalline tone of running water as he dangles a microphone through a hole in the ice. In another wonderful sequence we follow him listening to birdsong in a forest, capturing the crackle of leaves under his footsteps and hitting abandoned junk with a stick. We cut to the studio, the forest sounds now layered with fragile synth tones. In a quintessential moment, Sakamoto folds his arms, listening pensively. He turns to the camera. “It’s a good match. This is what I was looking for.”
WEEKLY FILM LISTINGS
Focus on Ryuichi Sakamoto
Yellow Magic Orchestra: Music Video Showcase
Screening Thursday 4 April
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
Neo Sora, 2023
Screening Thursday 4 April
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Nagisa Ôshima, 1983
Screening Friday 5 April
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Stephen Nomura Schible, 2017
Screening Sat 6 April
The Revenant
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015
Screening Sat 6 April
Babel
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2006
Screening Sunday 7 April
Matinees
WINHANGANHA
Jazz Money, 2023
Screening Fri - Sun
General Release
The Oil Machine
Emma Davie, 2022
Screening Monday 8 April
T-Blockers
Alice Maio Mackay, 2023
Screening Tuesday 9 April
No screening this week
The Keep
Michael Mann, 1983
Screening Thursday 4 April
Dune Part One
Denis Villeneuve, 2021
+
Dune Part Two
Denis Villeneuve, 2024
Screening Friday 5 April
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Steve Barron, 1990
+
Super Mario Bros.
Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton, 1993
Screening Sunday 7 April
Fantastic Voyage
Richard Fleischer, 1966
+
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Robert Wise, 1951
Screening Sunday 7 April
BBBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)
Uncertain whether it will return (you’ll be the first to hear)
No screening
CHINATOWN CINEMA
I Miss You
Yan Han, 2024
Screening alt days
Yolo
Jia Ling, 2024
Screening alt days
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom
Mitsuo Fukuda, 2024
Screening alt days
CINÉ-CLUB (Carlton)
No screening this week
The Company of Wolves
Neil Jordan, 1984
Screening Saturday 6 April
New Release
Origin
Ava DuVernay, 2024
Screening Daily
Goodbye Julia
Mohamed Kordofani, 2023
Screening Daily
Monkey Man
Dev Patel, 2024
Screening Daily
General Release
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2023
Screening Daily
Io Capitano
Matteo Garrone, 2023
Screening Daily
DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS: @ Miscellania
No screening this week
FOMO CINEMAS BRUNSWICK EAST
New Release
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2024
Immaculate
Michael Mohan, 2024
Screening Daily
Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, 2024
Screening Fri
Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023
Screening Daily
Retrospectives
Princess Mononoke
Lawrence of Arabia
Pulp Fiction
Night at the Crossroads
Jean Renoir, 1932
Screening Monday 8th of April @ 6.30pm
GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)
No screening this week
HITLIST (9 Gertrude St, Fitzroy)
No screening this week
New Release
Monkey Man
Dev Patel, 2024
Screening Daily
Origin
Ava DuVernay, 2024
Screening Daily
General Release
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2023
Screening Daily
Io Capitano
Matteo Garrone, 2023
Screening Daily
Immaculate
Michael Mohan, 2024
Screening Daily
Wicked Little Letters
Thea Sharrock, 2024
Screening Daily
Exuma
Jang Jae-hyun, 2024
Screening Daily
Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, 2024
Screening Fri
OVA CLUB
No screening this week
THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)
Man of the Cinema - A Tribute to John Flaus at 90
Queensland
John Ruane, 1976
+
Yackety Yak
Dave Jones, 1974
+
Blood Money
Chris Fitchett, 1980
Screening Wednesday 10 April
TOP OF THE HEAP (Tramway Hotel)
No screening this week
MELBOURNE HORROR FILM SOCIETY @ LONG PLAY (North Fitzroy)
No screening this week
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: SCREENING IDEAS
No screening this week
PALACE BALWYN / BRIGHTON / COMO / KINO / PENTRIDGE / MOONEE PONDS / WESTGARTH
New Releases
Monkey Man
Dev Patel, 2024
Screening Daily
Origin
Ava DuVernay, 2024
Screening Daily
Goodbye Julia
Mohamed Kordofani, 2023
Screening Daily
General Release
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2023
Screening Daily
Io Capitano
Matteo Garrone, 2023
Screening Daily
Wicked Little Letters
Thea Sharrock, 2024
Screening Daily
Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, 2024
Screening Daily
No screening this week
New Releases
Goodbye Julia
Mohamed Kordofani, 2023
Screening Daily
General Release
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2023
Screening Daily
Io Capitano
Matteo Garrone, 2023
Screening Daily
Wicked Little Letters
Thea Sharrock, 2024
Screening Daily
Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, 2024
Screening Daily
How to Have Sex
Molly Manning Walker, 2023
Screening Daily
The Great Escaper
Oliver Parker, 2023
Screening Daily
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, 2023
Screening Daily
Monkey Man
Dev Patel, 2024
Screening Daily
Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, 2024
Screening Sat 6 April
Kung-Fu Panda 4
Mike Mitchell, 2024
Screening Sat, Sun and Wed
UNKNOWN PLEASURES
No screening this week