★★★★★
I bought this book on a whim, at a nice used books store in Claremont. I'd started Hamsun's Growth of the Soil before and, although beautiful, it was a drag to read. Victoria, on the other hand, is a digestible, enthralling story.
Victoria reminds me a lot of Hermann Hesse. It's a simple story. The smart and virtuous and well-adjusted Johannes thinks of little else than the lovely Victoria. His successful career does not matter to him or to us. In this way, Johannes is a pure human; the bulk of his life is feeling and reflecting on feeling. I like characters like this since they make me slow down and think of how my own joys and memories link up through time to make me who I am.
★★★★★
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a legendary artist. This documentary does not say so. Instead, Coda follows Sakamoto quietly exploring the world around him. Nothing else is needed to understand his brilliance.
Nomura Schible charts Sakamoto's path after his cancer diagnosis, when he halted his ongoing musical projects to focus on his recovery. "I hadn't stopped working for so long, ever." We meet the restless, unstoppable artist who's been reminded that he, too, will someday die. This collision of fragility and his obsession with creating makes way for a gorgeous study. Sakamoto speaks of his circumstance with unwavering clarity; he grasps every lost thought and explores it, understands it. In this way, we're shown how Sakamoto's admiration for Tarkovsky's ambient sound meshes with his longing for a bygone state of nature, as does his drive against nuclear plants after Japan's deadly 2011 disaster. What's more, Nomura Schible makes it very clear that his ideas are not left at one-liners or wise nuggets of advice. Sakamoto works it all into his music; a day's reflection about the impermanence of music wiggles into an existential piece with drawn-out notes droning behind Paul Bowles' monologue about death from The Sheltering Sky.
Sakamoto embodies a spirit of exploration, where the natural world is an instrument far superior to those carved by humankind. He decries the industrial manufacture of pianos where slabs of wood are forced into each other to bend the world to our will. It is beautiful to see him crouch in a forest and listen, simply listen. He plays with a violin string on a snare - an easy, common fidget - with an exceptional focus. All around him, he admires the vulgar sounds, seeming amazed that he can produce any noise at all. It's a game of collecting noises like one would trinkets or berries. The maturity of the act is punctuated by Nomura Schible through contrasting such explorations with Sakamoto's digital and futuristic music with YMO. This is not aimless discovery. It's a man far down his journey of finding meaning in the world around him, and sharing his visionary delight with us.
The filmmaking is as impressive as the documentary's subject. Our camera drifts around Sakamoto's world, but becomes sharply aware once it finds something to grasp onto. Beautiful shots of Sakamoto, always centered, find him in his backyard listening to the patter of rain; or in his studio, reflecting on the liberating constraints of scoring film. Environmental shots never detract from the focus of this film: Sakamoto's reflection. We see what he sees; we hear his phone camera softly click as he takes pictures of Fukushima. He's our tour guide, an expert at seeing within as much as at noticing the busy landscape that surrounds him.
Nomura Schible takes his time with archival footage and clips from films; they are as much a part of Sakamoto's thoughts as the words he says. Rather than a showcase of his work, samples from Sakamoto's music serve to pull the viewer into his mindset. The beauty of his creations is left to be felt, not admired.
Coda is a soothing movie. It's tidy without being artificial. It's insightful, too; but the ease, the gentility with which Sakamoto carries himself left an impression on me as much as the wise stories he shares.
★★★★
Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true. That three words went through my mind endlessly. Repeating themselves like a broken record. You're so cool. You're so cool. You're so cool.
And sometimes Clarence asks me what would I have done if he had died. If that bullet had been two inches more to the left. To this, I always smile. As if I'm not going to satisfy him with a response. But I always do. I tell him of how I would want to die. But that the anguish and the want of death would fade like the stars at dawn. And that things would be much like they are now. Perhaps. Except maybe I wouldn't have named our son Elvis.