Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Final Concert Immortalized By His Filmmaker Son

A celebration of an artist’s life in the purest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is the definitive swan song of the beloved Oscar and Grammy winning Japanese pianist who said that the film “was conceived as a way to record my performances – while I was still able to perform – in a way that is worth preserving for the future.” And Opus is just that. Created by a team that included Ryuichi Sakamoto, his son Neo Sora as director, his wife Norika Sora as a producer and longtime collaborator Jeremy Thomas as executive producer, the film is a beautiful, moving testament to the late maestro’s life and work. It is a concert film that is so intimately and expertly shot with extraordinary closeups on the composer’s face and hands and with such incredible sound that viewers will feel they are in the studio on the stage with Sakamoto.

Twenty pieces, five decades, one performance, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Opus features award-winning music from Bernardo Bertolucci’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant, among other seminal scores and piano compositions, in his last performance.

On March 28th, 2023, legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away after a long illness. In the years leading up to his death, Sakamoto could no longer perform live. Single concerts, not to mention sprawling global tours, were too taxing. Despite this, in late 2022, Sakamoto mustered all his energy to leave the world with one final performance: a concert film, featuring just him and his piano.

Curated by Sakamoto himself and presented in his chosen order, the twenty pieces performed in the film wordlessly narrate his life through his music. The selection spans his entire career, from his popstar Yellow Magic Orchestra period, to his magnificent Bertolucci film scores, to music from his meditative final album, 12. Intimately filmed in a space he knew well, surrounded by his most trusted collaborators, Sakamoto bares his soul through his music, knowing that this would likely be his last chance to present his art.

Ryuichi Sakamoto sets the scene of his remarkable final performance in Tokyo’s NHK Broadcast Center’s 509 Studio: “Heading the large crew of nearly 30 people was cinematographer Bill Kirstein, who traveled from the U.S. to shoot the film using three 4K cameras. As for me, I went into the shoot a little nervous, thinking this might be my last chance to share my performance with everyone in this way. We recorded a few songs a day with a lot of care. I played some pieces that I had never played as solo piano performances, such as “The Wuthering Heights”(1992) and “Ichimei – small happiness” (2011). I played “Tong Poo” in a new arrangement at a slower tempo than I’ve ever performed it. So, in some sense, while thinking of this as my last opportunity to perform, I also felt that I was able to break new grounds. Simply playing a few songs a day with a lot of concentration was all I could muster at this point in my life. Perhaps due to the exertion, I felt utterly hollow afterwards, and my condition worsened for about a month. Even so, I feel relieved that I was able to record before my death – a performance that I was satisfied with.”

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Opus is in cinemas now, distributed by Modern Films in the UK and Northern Ireland and by Janus Films in North America.