The sound of a passing siren outside his Greenwich Village apartment brings back his memories of being in the neighborhood during 9/11, and the music he composed in response to it and the Iraq War. The nostalgic ’80s-ish sound of a track that would end up on Sakamoto’s 2017 album, async, becomes the jumping-off point for a look back at his early career in bubbling 1970s Tokyo. Schible moves from subject to subject intuitively, often letting sound lead the way.
CODA RYUICHI SAKAMOTO FULL
It comes full circle by the end of the documentary, where Sakamoto’s artistic relationship to disaster - natural and otherwise - is explored more fully. It’s a moving conceptual counterpoint to Sakamoto’s more practical anti-nuclear activism. The opening sequence sees Sakamoto touring the disaster site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, where he finds a previously submerged piano in an abandoned school and attempts to tune and play it. But the existential questions it dredges up result in a film that is more about Sakamoto constantly seeking a connection between his work and humanity, nature, and other creators’ art. Sakamoto’s 2014 throat cancer diagnosis serves as a kind of catalyst for the film, and naturally becomes the prism through which the artist assesses much of his career. There’s an air of patience that presides over director Stephen Schible’s footage, even during a period that presents a lot of tumultuous questions for his seemingly unflappable subject. With a light touch but deep reserves of respect for fans both old and new Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is an extremely fitting portrait of the influential composer.
For a living legend looking back on their legacy, the film’s role isn’t to argue their significance but rather examine it how didactic you want to go depends on the filmmaker and the subject. The best, I think, can function as some combination of the three. A late-career documentary can be many things: a gift to longtime fans, a primer for new ones, a victory lap.