Although I watched this film nearly a month ago a specific moment continually springs to mind, however, unlike many films in the genre, it isn’t related to a quote, life-sentiment or narrative but in relation to my experience of a moment in the film’s score. Being a film about a composer this may seem like a no-brainer but let me explain. During a scene unfolding in Sakamoto’s studio he begins to play a recording. The camera moves slowly from the computer-screen to a close-up of Sakamoto and it holds. The music slowly rises up enveloping all the space, both in the cinema and on the screen, and I felt it right to shut my eyes to be able to experience this moment in it’s fullest. In other words I felt that the filmmakers, through the static un-changing shot and the total overwhelm of the music, wanted me to shut my eyes as to experience the audio as purely as possible.
As my eyes were shut I felt the music run through me and interact with me much more purely, in a completely focused emotive way. However another impulse quickly came as I sat in my self-contained darkness—to open my eyes as to not miss a new shot. However sure enough every little peep brought to me the exact same image of Sakamoto fixated and transported into the music, and each of these peeps took me back out of the music. Finally I shut my eyes until the piece ended and, upon letting the light back in, the shot remained the same. In this short period I had felt two very conflicting forces in play; 1) my personal urge to experience this film as I will (i.e. closing my eyes) and 2) the urge to experience this film in the same way as I do others (keeping my eyes open).
This conflict highlights one of the very issues with the audio-visual medium that is film; the over-reliance the audience places on the visual element. This manifests itself clearly with my inability to keep my eyes shut during a static and uninteresting shot even though I fully believe that the filmmakers were encouraging the entire audience to shut their eyes for a brief moment to fully submit their attention to Sakamoto’s art and world. However I, for whatever reason, was not able to do that. My eyes flickered between lightness and darkness and thus my ears between full and partial appreciation of the musical element. This is not to say one cannot appreciate both elements when together, but when playing Sakamoto’s piece which exists purely in the world of music (it is not intended to be accompanied by visuals) it should, in an ideal world, be dissociated from any visual representation in the listeners mind and be experienced purely as sound. But then is this not an issue with including the song within a mixed-media like film? The easy answer would be yes, but in this circumstance we can exempt it as the filmmakers were clearly pushing us to close our eyes, but as we bought the cinema ticket to ‘watch’ the film instead of ‘listen’ to the film we feel an obligation to keep our eyes open wide to suck every penny of viewing out of the piece. Maybe if we changed the operative word from ‘watch’ to ‘experience’ I would have a different reaction to this scene…
Ultimately it is a question of our agency as an audience. Although we enact a similar role to the camera when viewing a film we have the ability to stop looking or to stop hearing or continue on as usual utilising both. And it is important to remember our agency as the viewer to select what we want to experience, especially regarding audio as our agency is more frequently used in the act of seeing—allowing us to search the screen and look where we please, while we cannot so easily listen where we please. Thus I shouldn’t have felt almost guilty at shutting my eyes to focus fully on Sakamoto’s score, I wasn’t losing any experience of the film—in fact I was enhancing my experience as I had actively interacted with the film in a fresh way, and thus that moment has remained in my brain ever since. A moment in a film which was, to me, purely auditory. Maybe it is that we are able to experience certain stimuli more purely when they are isolated, or maybe it all lies in intention. Sakamoto didn’t compose that piece for the film Coda, thus it didn’t accompany anything but was it’s own piece requiring full sensory attention towards it—in contrast his score for The Revenant and countless other films are meant to be heard and ‘seen’ making the isolated sense redundant and relying on a combination of the two to bring out it’s true nature.
We need to not be scared to avoid looking at the screen—a feeling that’s constantly baked into us as film is consistently pushed as a near 100% visual not a 50-50 audio-visual medium that can shift to either extreme of being purely audio or purely visual. Next time you feel like closing your eyes or begin to stop listening take a moment either then or afterwards to think about why it was. Did the filmmakers want you to listen purely? Did they want you to just see? Did they want you to close your eyes and ears and almost fall asleep? They probably did, but as the viewer it’s on you to make the decisions in how you want to view a film.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017)
3-4-2
9/13
~Leo