![ryuichi sakamoto the revenant ryuichi sakamoto the revenant](https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/19-ryuichi-sakamoto-coda.w710.h473.2x-e1530636356168.jpg)
Sakamoto has long displayed mastery of the soundscape: Some of his most breathtaking albums are built on pristine, perfectly ornamented ambient drones. No rattling drum marches are used to telegraph the drama. The subliminal message: In this realm, tension is a constant, and it's meted out in carefully calibrated degrees. It amplifies the serenity of the calm scenes and then, with little change in the musical content, underscores the more terrifying fight scenes.
![ryuichi sakamoto the revenant ryuichi sakamoto the revenant](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NyRD_8HKRMY/movieposter.jpg)
Brooding and expansive slowness (which feels breathy and natural even when synthesizers are involved) runs pretty much throughout the music. In the same way Antonio Sanchez's sizzling drumming became a window into the interior life of Birdman's main character, the score of The Revenant - which was mostly written and performed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, with additional music from The National's Bryce Dessner and German electronic artist Alva Noto - provides the film with its emotional baseline. Sound deepens the foreboding while adding a sense of psychoactive urgency. The bleakness of a landscape becomes suddenly vivid. There's a limit to the horizon-gazing.īut cue up a low, slow-moving chordal drone, let it hang like an ominous gray cloud over a scene, and just like that you've summoned the profound disquiet of a desolate place. The sweeping vistas in fading afternoon light all blend together. The snow-covered mountains all look alike.
![ryuichi sakamoto the revenant ryuichi sakamoto the revenant](https://lineimg.omusic.com.tw/img/album/1600936.jpg)
After a little while, like maybe 10 seconds into the trailer, you realize that there's only so much a filmmaker can do to capture the scope of the forbidding American West in winter. These are some of the challenges director Alejandro González Iñárritu ( Birdman) faced in creating The Revenant, a revenge thriller that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fur trapper who's been left for dead. How does a film conjure the unfathomable vastness of nature? How can it make moviegoers feel the harshness of a desolate place? Music Interviews In 'The Revenant,' A Return From Death's Door - Onscreen And Off