Avis des critiques

Opus is a meaningful work, if not a particularly enthusiastic one. Most concert films aim to elicit the amped-up feeling of being in the same room as the artist... Opus is whatever you want it to be, whether you choose to appreciate it simply for Sakamoto’s performance or view it as a poetic final statement of an artist contending with his own mortality.

A spare, lovely work directed by the late musician’s son, Neo Sora, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus is even more haunting on a big screen, where its shimmering black-and-white photography and elegant camera moves actually heighten the intimacy of the performance. As Sakamoto communes with his music, we feel like we might be intruding on a private requiem.

[Sakamoto] was always an immaculate looking man and here he is literally in the process of becoming an icon for real. [Opus] is a terrific document and a testament.

[In Opus,] Sakamoto is not just revisiting his compositions but rediscovering them. Searching, communion and occasional delight play upon his face; he’s still creating, still profoundly invested in the work.

I can’t recall a concert film as ascetically committed to documenting little more than the intimate dynamic between a musician and their instrument... [Opus's] dialectical illustration of Sora’s and Sakamoto’s respective mediums remains a tremendously moving testament to making art as a form of expressing love.

It’s as if Sakamoto is holding a final conversation with himself... [Opus] is, in its way, a minimalist masterpiece.

the shots and cuts seem less expressive of the performer and his music than of the director’s own desire to liven up what some might feel to be an emotionally monochrome program. Still, even when his technique occasionally threatens to distract from Sakamoto’s performances, Sora’s love for his father consistently shines through.

Far more than a showcase of his talent and productivity, “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus” lets Sakamoto deliver an elegy, and in the process, an autobiography of his creative journey, as captured through the precision and poetry of director Neo Sora’s camera.

It’s hard not to feel like Sakamoto is in the room with you... [and] for all the film’s immense beauty, it is devastating to think that [the composer] was knowingly playing this music for the last time.

This is not the type of concert film to be compared with dynamic innovations in the form, such as Jonathan Demme’s “Stop Making Sense” or “Spike Lee’s American Utopia” ...it has more in common with a deathbed confession.

Even for the viewer without much knowledge of Sakamoto’s work, “Opus” holds its own as the rare cinematic space for contemplation... You can hear [the composer's] quiet pedaling throughout, and that made me start thinking about the relationship of time to the music itself.