We wonder, in some small irreverent corner of our minds, whether the soft-spoken British notice that the Japanese rant and rave over everything, including the weather, and whether the Japanese, in turn, find the British catatonic.
But in a movie where British and Japanese are on the screen at the same time and are apparently sharing the same reality, the results look odd, and eventually undermine the film. NYX, MA.Each tradition works well enough in a movie where it is the only tradition. Grove shares steamy ode to sensuality with 'Slippery' Ryuichi Sakamoto reflects on his unique time with David Bowieįact 2021: Commissions and Live Performance
Read this next: FACT’s essential guide to Sakamoto’s band Yellow Magic Orchestra I also sort of hesitated to ask David to work with me on the music at the time, because he seemed very concentrated on acting. I hadn’t started working on it yet, I was totally concentrated on the acting. There was a swimming pool and restaurant lounge, but that’s it.ĭid you talk to him about the music you were doing for the film? There was nothing else to do except hanging out. Working with David Bowie, I was with him for a month, every day, on a very small island in the South Pacific Ocean. So two very new things came to be at the same time. Sakamoto: I never pursued an acting career, it’s not my intention, but it’s a fact that I acted in a film for the very first time with David Bowie, who was amazing. What was that experience like, acting and composing? I was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, so I know what it is. His vocals sound not like a cancer patient - because I know that. This morning I carefully listened back to each track of the new album. Even now I can’t believe, especially because the new album came out two days ago.
In an excerpt from our forthcoming interview with Sakamoto and fellow Revenant composer Alva Noto, and in the wake of the Bowie’s death from a disease the composer is intimately familiar with, Sakamoto reflects on the time he spent with Bowie. The pair give revelatory performances despite being non-professional actors, and though Sakamoto never acted again in the same capacity, his film score produced an international hit with ‘Forbidden Colours’, launching a career in soundtracks that is still going strong today (with the occasional Oscar and Golden Globe win along the way).
The film, about English POWs in a Japanese prison camp, framed its central conflict between Bowie’s rebellious Jack Celliers and Sakamoto’s fierce, conflicted Captain Yonoi. On Sunday night, while Sakamoto was attending the Golden Globes, the world was shaken by the news that David Bowie had passed away following his own battle with cancer. Besides their legacy as musicians, Sakamoto and Bowie had the unique experience of working together as actors in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 film Merry Christmas Mr. The influential composer and electronic music pioneer is currently navigating award season for his incredible score to The Revenant, his first new work since being treated for throat cancer.
When we scheduled an interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto, there was a lot we already wanted to talk about. “I was with him for a month, every day, on a very small island in the South Pacific Ocean.”