Something to watch tonight: Friday 30 August
Something to watch tonight: Friday 30 August
Max Richter’s Sleep (Johns, 2019)
We are big fans of composer Max Richter in this house. In fact, the editor-in-chief can spot a Richter soundtrack at 100 paces and there are plenty of them.
Sometimes it’s just the one track (“On the Nature of Daylight”) used in multiple films. We have heard it in Shutter Island, The Last of Us, The Handmaid’s Tale and – most famously – in Arrival where its presence as the opening and closing theme meant that Jóhann Jóhannsson missed out on an Academy Award nomination for best original score for the rest of the film.
He also scored The Leftovers – the greatest TV series of the last ten years.
His piece “Sleep” is the most streamed piece of classical music of all time, perhaps because it is eight and half hours long and designed to be listened to overnight and is designed to be listened to while you are asleep.
Richter also performs “Sleep” live and in 2019 participated in a documentary about the staging of a show at Grand Park in Los Angeles. The audience are each given cot beds and told to bring a sleeping bag and pillows. I reviewed it for At the Movies during the lockdowns in 2020:
The director Natalie Johns, with the help of some drones, levitates above the park but we also meet some of the audience to hear from them what they anticipated and what they got from the mesmeric and transporting music.
Richter’s partner Yulia, who co-produces the concerts and who is clearly a creative force to be reckoned with – Richter calls her the brains of the outfit – features as we learn about their relationship, their creative partnership and meet their delightful children, but it is Richter himself who is the star of the show.
Born in Germany but raised in the home counties of England, Richter has one of those voices that you could listen to for hours, not least because what he says is so insightful but also because it's so gentle and the tone is so pleasant. He's very soothing.
In fact, the whole film is very calm, as you might expect.
There’s a surprising amount of science involved in the thinking behind “Sleep” – he worked with a neuroscientist to understand the different stages and what was happening to our brains so he could mimic, or lie alongside, the natural rhythms and processes and try and find musical language to express it.
As a bonus, here is the 2018 music video for “On the Nature of Daylight” featuring Elizabeth Moss (who would go on to use the track three years later in an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale that she directed).
Where to watch Max Richter’s Sleep
Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay
Canada, Ireland, USA & UK: Digital rental
Further reading
Just in time for Father’s Day, RNZ have posted my latest listicle about movie dads. From Darth Vader to Viggo Mortensen in The Road, here are a few of my favourites. Let me know some of yours in the comments.
Favourite comments
There was lots of nice feedback on the Mad Men piece from Wednesday.
DT of Wellington thanked me for letting him know about Matt Zoller Seitz’s online bookstore: “I've got my eye on the Deadwood Bible, but the shipping is rather excruciating. Don't suppose you have any others you want to pick up to reduce the overall cost?! Ha! “
Reader MN said: “Bedrock TV for our house and thanks for reminding us of Soller Seitz. I recall reading his recaps of the final season in real time and being more impressed with those pieces than the show itself at that point (I nitpick about S6&7). Gotta revisit the writeups!”
And NoWrongAnswer wrote: “And all that smoking. I finally started watching it for the first time this month. I agree with your comment that there is barely a wasted moment. What a script. What a show.”