Good Time

The associate artist Ryuichi Sakamoto has made film music for over thirty films. He got his start in 1983 with the film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence by film director Nagisa Oshima - a film he also played a role in himself, alongside David Bowie. He went on to compose soundtracks for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1994), for Pedro Almodovar’s High Heels (1991), Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms (1993) and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2015). As well as for many smaller, but no less interesting films, like Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004).

The collaboration between the Holland Festival and associate artist Ryuichi Sakamoto is a reason for Eye to put the spotlight on Sakamoto’s impressive oeuvre of film music and the ways it continues to inspire new generations of (film) composers.

Good Time

Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) had already made a name for himself as an electronic music pioneer when he was asked by the Safdie brothers to score their thriller Good Time. Sakamoto, who also pioneered electronic music much earlier, is an admirer of the younger Lopatin, with whom he later even collaborated.

Lopatin’s first film score switches between sultry ambient and nervous synthesizers, making it the perfect support for this story about two tragic brothers (played by Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie) who try to pick up the pieces following a heist gone wrong. In between the ensuing panic and misery, there are just enough gleams of hope and reflection, which beautifully resounds in the ballad The Pure and the Damned written for the film and performed by Iggy Pop.