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Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda review – portrait of the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence composer

Stephen Schible’s documentary charts the career of the musician and anti-nuclear campaigner who created one of the catchiest film themes of the 80s

That “coda” in the title is maybe more wintry than it need have been. The Japanese film composer, musician and anti-nuclear campaigner Ryuichi Sakamoto was diagnosed with cancer in 2014, and his prodigious work rate had to slow to a virtual standstill. Stephen Schible’s documentary portrait follows the musician in the calm and introspective period forced on him – but it also shows him participating in post-Fukushima demonstrations. But whatever he had feared, and prepared himself for, this cancer is now in remission and so far it has not come back.

Sakamoto made his breakthrough writing the music for Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence – one of the most famous movie themes of the 80s with its inspirationally catchy westernised pop take on Japanese music. He also wrote for Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and the same director’s The Sheltering Sky; later we see him attempting to compose a musical accompaniment to author Paul Bowles’ cameo-soliloquy in that film. His career continues unabated to the present day, writing the score for Iñárittu’s The Revenant.

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