Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

2023

Documentary / Music

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 100% · 32 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 82%
IMDb Rating 8.0/10 10 949 949

concert film piano instrumental music live soundtrack

Plot summary

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.

Director

Neo Sora Photo
Neo Sora

Top cast

Ryuichi Sakamoto Photo
Ryuichi Sakamoto as Self
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 2160p.WEB.x265
145.76 MB
1280*706
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
12 hr 15 min
Seeds 4
270.31 MB
1920*1060
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
12 hr 15 min
Seeds 10
4.59 GB
2980*2074
Japanese 5.1
NR
30 fps
1 hr 43 min
Seeds 27

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by TakeTwoReviews 8 / 10

A fitting finale.

If you've not watched Opus yet or are about to, hit pause and watch Coda first if you've not already. The documentary gives a really wonderful broad introduction to Sakamoto and his work, before you sit down to appreciate what's happening here. This is a concert film. His final performance before his passing in 2023. He'd not toured or played for years on account of the cancer diagnosis. Opus is the very definition of a defiant last goodbye. Shot in Japan in beautifully crisp black and white. Just him and the piano, it's very intimate. No audience, the viewer gets their own personal concert with the very best seat in the house, often sat right next to Sakamoto. It's beautifully shot, but you can close your eyes and still appreciate Opus. It's the music after all where the magic lies. Watching him play though is a treat. The way he moves, the hand motions as he orchestrates the pianos sustain at the end of a song. Repositioning his glasses or retuning the piano, adding a metallic reverb to the strings. The poignant moments when he takes a break, inaudibly talking to someone off camera as he catches his breath from a cough. Capturing work like this is not easy, but here it seems effortless. It's a beautiful piece of work, lovingly put together by his son Neo Sora. A fitting finale.8/10.
Reviewed by fundaquayman 8 / 10

An intimate farewell that doesn't mean "Good-bye."

I count my blessings that work afforded me the opportunity to meet Ryuichi Sakamoto twice and watch two of his concerts when he toured across Asia for the release of the albums SWEET REVENGE, and 2 years later 1996.Even though I sat face-to-face next to him in two different interviews, and watched him perform live, none of those encounters (nearly 3 decades ago) were able to make me feel the same sense of candid immediacy as this solo performance - OPUS has the ability to make the audience feel he played that piano and his music JUST FOR YOU. The film, to me, feels like it was made for both fans of Sakamoto, and people already familiar with his work and more importantly, his demeanor and the nuances to his way of play - the extreme close-ups, the cutaways to his reflection on the piano, hair, back, hands, his gestures and grimace as he plays, pause, and ponder, made to feel all the more alive by leaving in, or enhancing the vibe by integrating ambient sound in the studio into the space between each musical piece and as he performs - all of that help to place us - the audience, as if we were right there with him as he performed for that one last time... compared to all the past concert films and documentaries on Ryuichi Sakamoto, OPUS has neither a concert-hall filled with his diehard fans, nor does it delve into his almost-obsession of "Sound." Instead what the audience get is an experience of Sakamoto playing his music for you only.Off stage, the Sakamoto I met was a quiet, observant, and slow to warm private man... until you hit a topic that interests him to unlock the guard he so comfortably is shielded by - from disliking the generic Jpop top acts of the time, to comparing 2 different Japanese authors both named Murakami (back in the 90's Sakamoto thought one was a hack, and the other "innovative, daring, and fresh" while admitting the dark topics Ryu Murakami wrote about were not to everyone's liking). Norika Sky Sora, his girlfriend at the time (whom he later married), was always nearby and the two would take cigarette breaks between interviews with their Gitanes... Sakamoto spoke about how the music industry in Japan was stuck with an old boys club arrangement, and if he had his way, music would not have to be distributed by means of just selling physical records or via the internet with the development of digital distribution technologies - there would no longer be boundaries due to geography or language differences... all that became a reality in the decade that followed, and I'm sure it made Sakamoto both happy and feel challenged at the same time. He spoke of his ambition and hope for music to have its own life, and his belief that "sounds" is both a part of, and as a proof of life itself - with OPUS, producer Norika Sora, and their son Neo, helped Ryuichi Sakamoto bid farewell without needing to say or treat this as a "Goodbye" - this sense of being in the Present, and not Past, is not what I expected as a takeaway from a concert film, even as a fan of Sakamoto's music. While some reviews here complain about the performance would have been more engaging if shown in color, in my opinion the choice of black/white allows the music itself to bring us our own unique interpretation to a spectrum of hues - as if this was his intention all along to ensure that not only his music, but also his vibe and presence, remain alive and a personal art form unique to each of us long after he's gone.
Reviewed by j-m-d-b 8 / 10

Beautiful to watch, or not watch

When artists strip their tools down to a minimum, their true artistry comes out.I found this film to be very soothing but also emotionally charged. The way Sakamoto said his goodbyes to the world using just a piano is so sensitive, I doubt such a journey has even been captured as strongly as this.The film is very laid-back, the pieces are slow and melodic. The sound recording is great. Not only is the piano recorded fantastically allowing its harmonies to sing, at times there is a significant component of ambient sound mixed in so you can hear Ryuichi breathing as he plays.I found myself in a movie theater not watching a film, but rather just listening to it with my eyes closed. The entire audience was mesmerized. The man's presence was felt through the medium.While I understood the gimmick at the end, I thought it was a bit unnecessary and heavy-handed. That's a very minor point of criticism though. Recommended viewing.
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