In Review: 'Arthur the King,' 'Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus'
This week, Mark Wahlberg bonds with a dog in an innocuous feel-good story and a masterful composer bids a stark farewell.
Arthur the King
Dir. Simon Cellan Jones
107 min.
Arthur the King deserves credit for admirable restraint, but only up to a point. An adaptation of Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord’s memoir Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home, which tells the story of a race in Ecuador during which Lindnord and his team befriended a dog who accompanied them for much of the journey, the film waits so long before collapsing into grotesque sentimentality that it almost seems like it never will. Then it does, spectacularly, in a final stretch that will make even the most easily manipulated animal lovers feel a bit dirty. It could easily bear an alternate title: DoesTheDogDie.com: The Movie.
Still, before the dog’s health becomes an issue, Arthur the King works pretty well as a sports film with a light dusting of canine cuteness on top. Mark Wahlberg stars as Michael Light, the film’s Americanized version of Lindnord. Introduced as the best adventure racer never to take first place via play-by-play voiceover provided by an unseen Bear Grylls throughout the film, the opening sequence watches as he loses yet again, and seemingly for the final time, by chancing a shortcut that leads his team into the mud. Michael’s wife Helena (Juliet Rylance) takes this as a sign to hang it up, but retirement doesn’t suit Michael nearly as well. At Helena’s encouragement, he decides to give it one last try. That means rounding up two members of the old gang (played by Simu Liu and Ali Suliman), convincing a talented climber named Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel) to serve as Helena’s repla
cement, convincing a sponsor to give him a shot, then heading to the Dominican Republic for the big event.
For a long stretch, Arthur the King mostly focuses on the thrills and insanity of the adventure race, which requires participants to spend days crossing dangerous terrain by hiking, climbing, biking, kayaking, and whatever other means can get them from Point A to Point Z while operating on as little sleep as possible. (Sleeping just eats up valuable time.) This opens the door for some exciting scenes, including a nerve wracking scene on a zip-line high above a forest, set against the backdrop of some stunning scenery. When the scruffy street dog Michael names Arthur starts to tag along, he mostly serves as a fifth member of the team who occasionally helps out by making sure they don’t fall off cliffs and such. The film depicts the growing bond between the humans and their new companion without laying it on too thick. Sure, they notice he has an injury that probably needs treating, but if he’s able to walk across miles of treacherous terrain, how bad can it be?
As it turns out: pretty bad, and what’s been a bland-but-entertaining push through some of the world’s toughest terrain transforms into a maudlin rush to get a dying dog the help he needs before it’s too late, dammit! Does this involve many scenes in which Mark Wahlberg talks to animals? Yes, it does. Does he end up bidding farewell to Arthur with one last emotional, “Say hi to your mother for me?” That would be a spoiler. But, either way, the ginned-up crisis about Arthur’s health leads Arthur the King to abandon everything that made it entertaining for much of its running time in an extended attempt to wring tears. Woof. —Keith Phipps
Arthur the King opens widely tonight.
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
Dir. Neo Sora
103 min.
Throughout his extraordinarily diverse career, the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was a pioneer in electronic and techno-pop music, wrote scores for movies like Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Last Emperor, and released instrumental albums that ranged from the experimental to the serenely minimalist. Yet the twenty songs selected for Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, a haunting performance before his death from cancer last year, have a quiet cohesion that’s enforced by conceit of Sakamoto sitting alone, at his piano, playing them for the last time on a bare stage with no audience. The lack of adornment extends to the black-and-white photography, which subtly shades darker as the film goes on, and the total absence of interviews or even song titles. Whatever you know about the film or Sakamoto is brought into the experience.
Perhaps that makes Opus a for-fans-only proposition. And even as a fan—The Last Emperor is certainly among my two or three favorite film scores—the film requires a patient easing into the groove, as Sakamoto works through compositions that are almost uniformly delicate and contemplative. Emphasis on almost: Like a lot of minimalist work, you notice when the tone shifts and something extraordinary happens, like when Sakamoto keeps in his mistakes on a track or the music suddenly pops with emotion. But broadly speaking, Opus is no more or less than what it appears to be from the very start—one man behind a piano playing his music, and a film content that nothing more is necessary.
A little of the off-screen context: Opus was shot over several sessions, because Sakamoto was so weakened by his illness that he couldn’t record more than three songs at a time. The cinematographer, Bill Kirstein, and his crew designed the lighting to reflect Sakamoto’s idea that the concert depicts “the progression of time from morning into night.” Taking that journey with Sakamoto is a challenge, because there’s a certain barebones uniformity to the performance, but it works a kind of magic as it goes along. Knowing that this is the last time the composer will perform these songs, as the lights grow starker and the camera glides across his spindly frame and hands, has a cumulative power that sneaks up on you. By the time he builds into a full-bodied performance of “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” the film has become a vital living memorial to a brilliant artist and a final gift to his admirers. — Scott Tobias
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus opens in New York tomorrow and expands from there.
Very late to this but Opus sounds, in some ways, a translation of his last concerts—I was lucky to see one of them, “works a kind of magic as it goes along” is a good description. The progression of songs was pretty well-calculated (he finished with the theme from Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and it was just incredibly moving, every feeling from that film came through in the keys in part because you were so prepped for it). A lot of that comes from physical presence, though—it sounds like a lot of care was put into modulating the visual language of the film and I look forward to seeing how it compares.
Between this and Coda I think we’ve gotten a lot of late-period, pensive Sakamoto and I feel like it’s kind of overshadowed his earlier stuff. I highly recommend seeking out (it’s been uploaded various places online) the 1985 (TV) documentary Tokyo Melody, which is the source of many of the clips of younger Sakamoto you see excerpted in places like Coda. It’s at an interesting point of his career, right before his turn from a primarily Japan-focused to a more globally-oriented recording artist, and you get a sense of his work when it was at the technical cutting edge. It also has one of my favorite filmed piano performances, too—an energetic four-hands duet with his then-wife intercut with a stadium show of the same melody, and the piano duet’s the more exciting half. It’s a side of Sakamoto I wish we’d have seen more of on film.
Sakamoto has meant a lot to me over the past few decades, so I was happy to see that OPUS is screening at one of my local arthouse theaters at the end of the month. I can’t wait.