Ryuichi Sakamoto on new documentary Coda, beating throat cancer and David Bowie’s best music
The writer of music for films including The Revenant and The Last Emperor, Sakamoto never intended to show his everyday life with documentary Coda, but being diagnosed with cancer during filming changed his approach
Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was at the Venice International Film Festival to present the world premiere of his new documentary, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, but the 65 year-old, who contracted throat cancer during the film’s production, is taking no chances in our interview.
Sakamoto has before him an array of very healthy crudités and ample water to drink. In the film as in our interview he is open about his battle for life, which has placed him in a mood of quiet reflection.
Ryuichi Sakamoto on surviving cancer, the death of close friend David Bowie, and his last wish
Coda’s Tokyo-born director, Stephen Nomura Schible, admits that the film changed after Sakamoto was diagnosed.
“I wanted to follow Ryuichi into his new music, which changed as he was struggling with this mortality,” Schible says. “We didn’t know what was going to happen next. Ultimately, we allowed his voyage of self-discovery to guide us.”
In one of the first scenes, which takes place at a former evacuation site of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, Sakamoto sits at a piano playing the theme he composed for the 1983 British-Japanese war film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, exquisitely accompanied by performers on violin and cello.
