"Ryuichi Sakamoto: Finale" is being released in China,
Directed by Steven from 2012 to 2017,
5 years of follow-up production,
Complete this documentary about Ryuichi Sakamoto.
35,000 people on Douban have seen it and scored a high score of 8.8.
1989 Photo by Albert Watson
Ryuichi Sakamoto, nicknamed "Professor",
World-class musicians, film score masters,
It is a common idol for young people in Asia.
Sakamoto formed a band YMO when he was young, and became popular in Europe, America and Japan.
It has a pioneering influence on the electronic music and hip-hop of later generations,
At the age of 35, he won the Oscar for Best Original Score for "The Last Emperor".
After settling in New York at the age of 38,
He often creates on the themes of environmental protection and anti-war.
Fans love him, has long been unlimited music,
It's about treating him as a cultural ICON,
A spiritual leader, to be revered.
An interview with Director Stephen
In another week, it will be Ryuichi Sakamoto's 68th birthday.
On the occasion of the release of Ryuichi Sakamoto: The Finale,
Interviewed director Stephen who came to Beijing,
"I hope this movie will make everyone feel
How Ryuichi Sakamoto heard about the world. ”
Edited by Ni Qianye
In September 2017, at the Venice Film Festival, the documentary "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Finale" premiered in the world, and the audience stood up and applauded for a long time.
Ryuichi Sakamoto in the front row was a little shy, and he said to the documentary filmmaker next to him with a little embarrassment: Stephen, let's get out of here.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: The Finale chronicles how the musician, after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan and his own experience of throat cancer, responded to disaster with art and resumed composing music.
In December 2019, the film was finally released in China. Fans of music, film and other fans have gone to worship.
Ryuichi Sakamoto is in Greenland and is fascinated by the sounds of local nature
"Finale" began filming in 2013 and was completed in 2017, and it is also the creative stage of Ryuichi Sakamoto's new album "Asynchronous". He loved the album so much that he even had the idea of hiding it from others.
The music on this album is very different from the past:
There is almost no melody, but the sound of footsteps stepping on fallen leaves, the sound of a piano damaged by a tsunami, the wailing of a nuclear pollution measuring instrument, the traditional Japanese shamisen, and so on.
This is Ryuichi Sakamoto, who feels the fragility of life even more after the Fukushima accident and cancer, and feels that the most beautiful sound is also his musical philosophy - "All things are music".
YMO's military years
Born in classical music, he has become an innovator of contemporary Japanese music
Born in Tokyo in 1952, Ryuichi Sakamoto began learning piano at the age of 3 and felt as a debussy reincarnation as a young man. But Ryuichi Sakamoto never deliberately wanted to be a musician until Haruto Hosono pushed him.
In 1978, Hosono Haruto invited Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi to form a band together. Sakamoto had just graduated from the composition department of Tokyo University of the Arts at the time, and Takahashi Yukihiro joked that he was a highly educated musician and asked him if he would become a professor in the future. The nickname "Professor" comes from this.
YMO Band, from left: Haruoto Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yukihiro Takahashi
YMO album cover
Ryuichi Sakamoto was surprised that Hosono and Takahashi had no formal musical education, but had mastered the core of music. Unlike Sakamoto, who was trained in systematic classical music and loved experimental modern music, Hosono and Takahashi's musical origins have elements of jazz and pop music.
After YMO's music became popular in Europe and the United States, it began to be accepted in Japan, and in the streets of Tokyo in the early 1980s, the avant-garde, high-tech electronic music of the YMO band could be heard everywhere. It had a pioneering impact on the electronic music and hip-hop of later generations.
Sakamoto said, "Before joining YMO, I was just half a bottle of vinegar, and after experiencing disputes and entanglements in the band, I grew little by little. ”
In 1983, YMO disbanded at its peak and became a legend; Ryuichi Sakamoto flew solo and began to shine in the field of film scores.
Merry Christmas on the Battlefield
Master of film scoring
In 1982, film director Nagisa Oshima invited Ryuichi Sakamoto to star in Merry Christmas on the Battlefield, playing a Japanese military officer.
Sakamoto is a fan of Nagisa Oshima and has seen almost all of his films, but the arrogant young man has an additional request: then please give me the soundtrack. Nagisa Oshima said yes.
At that time, Japanese movies were usually rushed to match music a week before their release, but Sakamoto asked Nagisa Oshima for 3 months, and Nagisa Oshima agreed again, without any instructions, giving him 100% creative freedom. As a result, the theme song "Merry Christmas, Lawrence" was even more influential than the film itself.
Merry Christmas: Mr. Lawrence Sakamoto Ryoichi - Merry Christmas on the Battlefield
Regarding the creation of this divine comedy, Ryuichi Sakamoto himself explained: "Because it is Christmas, I want to use a bell. While the movie story takes place on a small island in the South Pacific, you can't use European bells, so think of using the sound of Balinese caramella. ”
As a result, Sakamoto began a career of collaborating on film scoring with a number of international directors.
Stills from The Last Emperor
Ryuichi Sakamoto and Chen Chong, while filming The Last Emperor
In 1986, Filming of Bertolucci's The Last Emperor began in the Forbidden City in Beijing, inviting Ryuichi Sakamoto to play the role of Japanese officer Masahiko Kazuhiko. After filming, he was urgently appointed as a soundtrack composer.
Two weeks later, Sakamoto handed over 44 pieces.
Imperial Concubine Wenxiu left Puyi's home in the rain, threw down an umbrella and ran away, and he wrote a poem "Rain" for Wenxiu. The first time I told the Italian staff, everyone hugged each other and shouted, "Bellissimo (so beautiful), bellissimo (too beautiful)."
The soundtrack to The Last Emperor also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
In fact, Sakamoto did not study Chinese music, he received the task and immediately bought more than 20 Chinese music collections, spent a day to listen to all of them, 44 songs in 2 weeks, and was exhausted and hospitalized after completion.
He said that he made the film soundtrack because these film creators attracted him, "I seem to have inherited my father's personality, and it is easy to be attracted to people or things, and I am fascinated." ”
Ryuichi Sakamoto's studio in New York
In 2014, during the critical period of his own cancer treatment, Sakamoto accepted the soundtrack invitation to the movie "The Revenant" despite his family's objections, because there was no way to say no to director Alejandro.
In 2017, Taiwanese director Tsai Mingming sent him the new film "Your Face" for him to see, and he wrote back that he wanted to do the soundtrack for the film. A month later, Ryuichi Sakamoto sent music to Cai Mingming, accompanied by a text message: You can use as much as you want and wherever you want.
The music was put into the film and fit exceptionally well, and it later won the Best Original Score at the Taipei Film Festival.
"All Things Are Music"
In the documentary "Finale", there is a scene that hits people very hard:
Ryuichi Sakamoto, dressed in a blue T, with a blue plastic bucket over his head, stood in the rain and felt the sound of raindrops tapping.
As a teenager, influenced by modern musicians such as John Cage, Ryuichi Sakamoto believed that everything was music. Bali travels in the 80s. He saw the locals tie a pigeon whistle on the feet of the pigeons, and when they flew, the pigeon whistle made a sound of far and near, mixed with the sound of the gentle wind and the sound of the forest, which made him remember it unforgettable.
When he was the director of the Sapporo Arts Festival in 2014, he designed the opening ceremony not to play music, but to let a group of pigeons with pigeon whistles fly.
Ryuichi Sakamoto recorded the sound of rain hitting the roof
Sakamoto is interested not only in the music itself, but also in the sound landscape of the entire environment.
"Every time it rains, I open the window and put the tape recorder out." He would knock on what he saw anywhere, understanding how they sounded. In Barcelona, a patrol car drove by with a whistle, and he quickly pulled out his mobile phone to record, happy not to miss the sound.
Feeling the sound and recording the sound has become his daily routine.
After the 2011 Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear leak, Ryuichi Sakamoto found a piano that had been swallowed up by the tsunami, and the piano was completely out of tune, but he was fascinated by this sound, "The waves came up in an instant, allowing the piano to return to its natural state, and after the natural tuning of the piano, I think it is particularly beautiful." ”
He put the sound of this piano into his new album "Asynchronous".
Although he became a musical icon in Europe, America and Japan as early as the 1980s, Ryuichi Sakamoto never stopped exploring the boundaries of music. Jumping back and forth between modern music, classical music, pop music, electronic music, folk music, etc., and also in various parts of the earth, the Arctic, Africa, and the South Sea islands draw inspiration from sound, becoming more and more unrestricted.
"I always feel that no matter what we say, the people above can't hear it." Eventually, there was a return to silence, and the Japanese had been silent for more than forty years. ”
In the documentary "Finale", Ryuichi Sakamoto speaks at a large rally against the restart of nuclear power plants, "Whether it is the nuclear power plant accident, or the political and social situation in Japan after the disaster, all of them are deteriorating... If I don't speak my mind, I feel very depressed. I can't turn a blind eye. ”
Ryuichi Sakamoto has always had his own clear political stance and is an active promoter of social activities.
Ryuichi Sakamoto in college
Ryuichi Sakamoto's father was an editor at a publishing house and his mother was a hat designer. In the 1970s, left-wing ideas were very popular in Japan. Ryuichi Sakamoto has been a left-wing enthusiastic youth since high school and actively participates in the left-wing movement.
"Imitating the spirit of China, we must also use music to serve the workers and peasants!" "Liberating together the music manipulated by capitalism". Opposition to the uniforms of the schools, the unified examination system, the uniforms, the school hats and the examinations in their high school strike movements were really abolished.
Although Ryuichi Sakamoto eventually took the university entrance exam, he believed that he entered Tokyo University of the Arts with the idea of "dismantling the university system".
In 1969, he gave a passionate speech in front of the Shinjuku High School building
In his autobiography Music is Freedom, Ryuichi Sakamoto recalls his active sports personality, "There was a rumor that in the blockaded Campus of Shinjuku High School, Sakamoto was playing Debussy's music in a hard hat. But I don't remember these things anymore, and if I had done them, I would have wanted to make a splash. ”
If you say that the positive movement of his youth, with the atmosphere of "secondary two", after moving to New York at the age of 38, he felt more and more deeply the faults that existed in the world.
Photographed in the personal recording studio of Minami Aoyama
In 1997, he wrote the song "Discord" (meaning irreconcilable, disputed) because he saw that the tv was covering the news of the Refugees of the Rwandan Civil War, and that night, he dreamed that he wanted to write an orchestral song about the incident, so he immediately got up, rushed to the studio in the basement, and quickly wrote it.
"I had a feeling that I couldn't be silent. For me, this should be a big turnaround. ”
Life is the head of Oppenheimer, the father of the central atomic bomb
In 1999, at the turn of the century, Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote an opera called "LIFE", which contained a lot of information related to environmental and social issues, such as the head of Oppenheimer, the father of the nuclear weapons and atomic bomb, projected on a huge screen. Sakamoto hoped that after the wars and disasters of the 20th century, humanity would become wiser.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was filmed during the 9/11 incident
But in the first year of the 21st century, he experienced the events of 9/11 in New York. Many people were worried that terrorists would launch a second wave of attacks with nuclear weapons, so Sakamoto Ryuichi bought an off-road vehicle with a month's worth of water and food, planning to flee at any time, and also bought a lot of gas masks, distributed them to others, and also sent an ex-wife.
In December, together with Friends such as Murakami, he published a review book, Anti-War.
Chasm album cover
In the 21st century, his first album was Chasm, released in 2004, the year before the U.S. military attack on Iraq. The album is full of emotions driven by anger, such as the first song is rap, co-performed by South Korean rapper Mc Sniper, with lyrics that read, "Carrying the old man who groans because of hunger, you and I who are dragged by the uneasiness and danger of terror..."
Although the general public has taken to the streets around the world to question the motives of the US military's offensive, the media or professionals have not said a word about it. I really couldn't watch it, and every day it hurt and I thought what a joke this was. ”
Tour of Greenland in 2008
Ryu Sakamoto put a tape recorder into the glacier, "I'm catching the sound."
Ryu Sakamoto's reflections on man-made disasters and environmental problems were answered in some way during a trip to Greenland in 2008.
It was an art project that invited artists to Greenland to see the consequences of global warming visually. Seeing an astonishing number of seawater and icebergs, Sakamoto's heart was greatly shocked.
"When man places a burden on nature beyond what nature allows, it is man who suffers, and nature does not feel any trouble. During that time in the world of icebergs and seawater, I kept feeling how insignificant human beings were. ”
The trip to Greenland also profoundly changed his work-on album Out of Noise (2009), using the sounds of arctic ice and snow melting and running water, and he arranged these original sounds directly, and new music gradually took shape.
Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Tohoku Youth Orchestra
The 2011 Earthquake in Japan and the nuclear leak had a profound impact on Ryuichi Sakamoto, recruiting children from the affected areas and forming a Tohoku Youth Orchestra to teach and bring them into the world of music.
As late as 2019, he said, "The shock of the incident is still there." What exactly is that vibration and what should I do? I haven't been able to find the answer yet, and they're influencing my creations."
Ryuichi Sakamoto: The Finale also documents his search for answers.
The following is a self-statement by documentary filmmaker Steven.
Self-description Steven Nomura Schipbo
After the Fukushima nuclear accident,
I saw ryuichi Sakamoto differently
Around 1990, Ryuichi Sakamoto and I moved from Tokyo to New York at about the same time.
I was born in Tokyo in 1970 to a Japanese mother and an American father. When I was a kid, all over Tokyo, I felt that YMO music was everywhere. I have always been a fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto.
In 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck Japan's eastern Pacific Ocean, followed by a tsunami, and radioactive material leaked from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which at the time was the largest nuclear power plant in service. Everything in my hometown has changed dramatically.
In May 2012, I met Ryuichi Sakamoto, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University, at an event in New York about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, to give a lecture on nuclear pollution. Ryuichi Sakamoto in front of me was completely different from what I remembered.
During the YMO period, Ryuichi Sakamoto made mechanical electronic music
In my mind, he was the most handsome member of the band YMO. In the 1980s, Japan's economy took off, science and technology developed rapidly, and came out of the shadow of the post-war period, and everyone had a dreamy yearning for the future, and he was like a typical example of the times, representing the hope and happiness that science and technology can bring. Ryuichi Sakamoto in front of him, who is older, seems a little remorseful, realizing that technology will also bring us a lot of trouble.
Ryuichi Sakamoto at the scene of an event opposing the restart of a nuclear power plant
At this event, I learned for the first time that Ryuichi Sakamoto had his own position on environmental issues and nuclear issues. I also learned that he plans to hold a music festival called "No Nuclear" in Tokyo in July 2012.
The Japanese mainstream media is uneasy about his stance against nuclear contamination because he is so famous.
The media didn't follow up and stay silent, and I was an independent filmmaker living in New York, and I felt like I should document it.
I really don't know why Ryuichi Sakamoto agreed. He's seen another of my music documentaries, about Eric Clapton, and he loves it.
And I guess he did want someone to help him tell his story after the Fukushima accident. Maybe he thinks I can tell it from an international perspective.
Ryuichi Sakamoto played for the people in the disaster area
What can we do after a disaster
The Fukushima nuclear accident completely changed my life, and in the face of disaster, there was nothing we could do but try to figure out what we could do.
In Iwate Prefecture, a small town called Rikuzen-Takata, many people were killed in the tsunami and was a hard-hit area. In December 2012, Ryuichi Sakamoto went there to perform for the locals.
The earthquake struck in March 2011, a year and nine months later, but some people told us that they could finally actually fall asleep while Ryuichi Sakamoto was performing. The situation was very impressive to the professor, but he tried to calm himself down, and in order to make people feel relaxed from the music, the player could not be too emotional.
After the Fukushima nuclear accident, the world we know as it seems to be coming to an end, as if it has entered the end of an era.
I wanted to show how Ryuichi Sakamoto responded to disaster with art.
The first scene of the film is when Ryuichi Sakamoto plays a piano damaged by a tsunami, and he finds the sound of the piano out of tune beautiful.
The scene encompasses basically all of the themes the film is exploring: the story of a man who overcomes difficulties and begins to create new and beautiful music; he eventually embraces life, but at the same time, he has a very keen awareness of everything in the world that is falling apart.
After the cancer, he encouraged me to keep shooting
During filming, in 2014, he developed cancer.
Shortly after learning of his illness, he allowed me to interview him. I couldn't bear to continue to bother, but he said you should shoot it. This is the most painful part of the whole shooting. I interviewed him a lot because the cancer was in his throat and we were worried that he wouldn't be able to speak later.
At that time, Mr. Ryuichi Sakamoto and his family did not want anyone other than me to come to their house to shoot.
His son had just graduated from college and was a very talented filmmaker, and when I was shooting alone in their house, he would help me light up and radio. I said to him, why don't you just shoot it yourself?
I soon discovered that he was shooting very well and had a very gentle relationship in it. Later, as soon as he heard his father playing the piano, like a firefighter, he rushed over with his camera to shoot. Many of the shots inside the home were taken by Mr. Sakamoto's son. Later, When Mr. Sakamoto's body recovered a little, I would bring a small team and his son would be a part of the team.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's neighborhood outside his home in New York solari Ryuichi Sakamoto - async
I once tried directing Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it never worked. He was so clever that as soon as he realized I was making some arrangements, he would ruin it. He believes that natural outpouring is the best, and you are expressing it honestly.
It's also true that I've always wanted to end the movie with the birth of new music, and it just happened.
We had finished shooting that day and just wanted to take a shot of Ryuichi Sakamoto playing the piano, and he said, "Then I'll just play it." He started playing Solari, a new song he wrote, and it was the first time he played the piece in front of others.
That was actually the moment I had been waiting for 5 years.
During the filming, there were many memories, the most beautiful of which was to stay in a small room with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and he composed music in front of a piano.
He spent the whole summer working on the new album "Asynchronous". We visit him every weekend and talk about his ideas, his life, and best of all, sometimes when he gets inspired, he suddenly starts playing.
The music was so beautiful, and he was sitting there.
"I want the audience to feel it
How Ryuichi Sakamoto heard about the world"
We all call Ryuichi Sakamoto "Professor", and I want to incorporate his ideas into the production of documentaries.
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a minimalist who always says less is more. So there are a lot of moments of silence in the movie, and sometimes silence is the most powerful.
Ryuichi Sakamoto plays "Merry Christmas Lawrence" in "Tokyo Melody"
The film has a lot of clips that go back and forth between the past and the present, and the clips jump from one part of the world to another, because I think that's one of the characteristics of Ryuichi Sakamoto's thinking.
I interspersed the film with some of Ryuichi Sakamoto's documentary Tokyo Melody from 1985 by French cinematographer Elizabeth, which was like a time capsule when he played Merry Christmas Lawrence faster, the piano pitch was higher, and he spoke faster. The contrast between then and now is interesting and beautiful.
In 1987, Ryuichi Sakamoto released an album called Neo Geo, which included Balinese music, Okinawa, Japan, and African origin, and for him, it was a flat world. The same is true in the movie, the last moment in Africa, the next scene is in Greenland.
Ryuichi Sakamoto is in the disaster area after the Fukushima nuclear accident, where the chirping of an instrument for measuring radioactive energy can be heard in the film
I slowed down the overall pace of the film so that the sound could stay and be felt. This approach is also related to my experience with Ryu Sakamoto going to the Fukushima nuclear pollution zone together.
It was actually very calm, there were birds, but there were no people, and the scariest thing I felt was that I didn't feel any danger at all. People's five senses can not perceive nuclear pollution, can only be detected through scientific and technological things, colorless and tasteless, we humans have created a danger, we ourselves can not perceive.
I hope that through this film, the audience can feel how Ryuichi Sakamoto hears the world.
Ryuichi Sakamoto at the concert of his new album Async
Ryuichi believes that all sounds are musical—even ambient. He included various voices and brought them to the album. For example, hang a microphone on the wall of your home and make his house look like a musical instrument. This philosophy inspired his latest work, and the way we edited.
The sound of broken pianos, the wailing of instruments measuring radioactive energy, the melting of arctic ice, and the beautiful melody played by Ryuichi Sakamoto—all of these are combined like musical phrases. We cut the film according to the sound, hoping it would be like a long piece of music.
At the end of the film, he creates beautiful new music, and then back to his daily life, the weather is very cold, he said to move his fingers, stay warm, and continue to create.