We went for a pre-film beer at the Phoenix bar, a Dundee institution that looks a bit grim and forbidding from the outside but once you’re inside it’s welcoming and characterful.

Perched on bar stools we ordered a couple of pints of Deuchar’s IPA which slipped down very smoothly. The DCA cinema is just across the road from the Phoenix, so it’s a very handy watering hole for before or after a film.

Today’s film was ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda’, a wonderful portrait of the Japanese musician and composer who scored Bertolucci’s films ‘The Last Emperor’ and ‘The Sheltering Sky’ as well as Iñárritu’s ‘The Revenant’.

Subdued colours predominate in ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda’, faithfully reflecting Sakamoto’s low-key yet good-humoured and passionately engaged personality.

The film’s mood is one of warm, wistful melancholy, as Sakamoto is shown dealing with the personal challenge of a cancer diagnosis as well as the social and environmental threat of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and its repercussions throughout Japanese society.

Heavy stuff indeed, but ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda’ is life-affirming in its portrait of Sakamoto as a quietly inspirational figure whose beautiful music, environmental awareness, and social conscience shine through every minute of the film.

Sakamoto’s creativity draws heavily on ambient sounds, which he is attuned to with an extraordinary degree of sensitivity, whether out in remote woodlands with no one else around, or in his own garden with a bucket on his head to hear what the falling rain sounds like as it hits.

My favourite scene from this superb film is the one where Sakamoto’s trio (comprising himself on piano, Judy Kang on violin, and Jaques Morelenbaum on cello) play to a post-tsunami audience huddled together for warmth in what I think was a school hall. Sakamoto’s piano notes are like raindrops falling softly on still water, a gentle therapeutic counterpoint to the tsunami’s destructive rage. It’s a breathtaking scene.

Related Post: ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto – Opus’, Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA)

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