Live concert films are mostly formulaic. The audience filing into the venue. The performers warming up backstage. The band close ups, the cutaways to the wings, then zooming out to the ecstatic crowd. The sweaty and exhausted atmosphere in the dressing room afterwards. Sometimes the live footage is inter-cut with interviews, location footage, and the “making of” narrative. Occasionally, there will be scenes shot on the road, revealing the inevitable tedium and monotony of live touring.

A few notable exceptions have tried to break with this format, to present something more dramatic, more mystical, even mythical – think of Pink Floyd’s “Live in Pompeii” (knowingly echoed by Melbourne’s own Mildlife), Talking Head’s “Stop Making Sense”, and David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars”.

Often, the concert film becomes a souvenir. For those who were there, it enables them to relive the experience. For those who weren’t, they may get some vicarious thrill, but they won’t get to experience the performance as it was fully intended. These films can make us feel we missed out on an historic event, but they can also remind us why we are glad not to have been there at all (the Rolling Stones at Altamont?).

Many concerts these days (and the accompanying Blu-Ray discs) are all about the spectacle, sometimes at the expense of the actual music. Choreographed to within an inch of their lives, these shows leave very little to chance or the unexpected, with their troupes of dancers, video backdrops, somersaults and acrobatics, multiple costume changes, “forced” audience participation, and the “surprise” guest appearances during the encores….

So the footage of the final live performance by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto goes against this trend. Filmed alone, on piano, in stark black and white, and with no audience, no voice-overs and no talking heads, “Opus” is not strictly speaking a concert. Due to his failing health, Sakamoto was unable either to withstand the rigours of touring or to perform a single concert. Instead, these performances were shot in stages, and edited together to form a seamless programme, with nothing but Sakamoto, a piano, and the music, plus some very subtle lighting and framing. The sound recording is brilliant, and the content covers most aspects of Sakamoto’s illustrious and prolific career. It’s a fitting tribute, and a perfect counterpoint to “Coda”, the documentary he made when he had just come through an earlier health scare.

Sometimes, less is more.

Next week: Severance….