Ryuichi Sakamoto in Opus

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: OPUS
Directed by Neo Sora
Certificate: U
☆☆☆☆

A RIVER is always in constant motion. Put your foot into the riverbank spot and you are never breaking the surface of the same river – every water molecule flowing over your foot is a different one.

And as the Hellenic Stoics said, time is the same: it never stops, every moment is unique – and every moment that has passed is dead. It means why are all dying every day, and every one of us will, at some point, no longer exist.

Is there a better way to ruminate on these fundamental aspects of the human condition than by gazing at a pianist, illustrating the concept of time by playing lingering notes that once completed are gone forever?

Ryuichi Sakamoto was more than aware of the abstract frailty of time.

In this extraordinary piece of film, we watched the now-dead musician work his way through 20 pieces of his own composition, spanning a 50-year long career.

How Neo Sora managed to create such a beautiful piece of work about his father is an interesting approach to grief: one can only imagine the mixture of grief and comfort shooting and editing Opus must have inflicted.

Shot six months before oropharyngeal cancer took him, he gathered up every ounce of his passion and poured it over the keys.

Sakamoto was a ground-breaker: his band, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, was a trailblazer in electronic music. He won a Grammy and Oscar for his work on the film, The Last Emperor.

This film is simply Sakamoto sitting at his piano, lit sparsely, his trademark neat silver hair and trendy John Lennon specs perched on his nose. He looks frail and consumed, but by his passion for music, not the disease that will kill him.

This is not a faultless performance – there is a moment where he loses his thread and appears to mutter under his breath – but instead it is riddled with meaning.

If you enjoy modern classical, this is a perfect chance to catch one of the greatest contemporary pianists at work. Watching his fingers skate across the ivories is mesmerising, inspiring and almost indescribably beautiful.

We are not given any back story. This is not a narrative documentary where we learn about his life, his techniques, how he composed. That is surely a film to come.

But instead we are given 100 minutes to sit back and listen, to engage with the music, and ponder upon how awfully fleeting our time is, and why we should endeavour to do the best we can while it slips through our fingers. What an encore.