Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Can a film that raises more questions about its subject than it answers be considered a masterpiece? If it can, that film is Paul Schrader's innovative cinematic biography of the Japanese novelist, essayist and actor Yukio Mishima, the man who in 1970 committed public seppuku (hara-kiri) in an unprecedented, grandiloquent attempt to turn his life into art. [12 Sep 1985]

One of the most gorgeous and sophisticated portraits of an artist ever put on film.

Beautiful, yet flawed film.

A sumptuous austerity, paralleling Mishima’s disciplined decadence.

An ambitious, respectful account of the life and work of Yukio Mishima, the prolific Japanese author who made a romantic cult of Japan's lost world of martial glory and spartan warrior-manhood.

There’s a coldness in Schrader’s calculations, and disturbingly he seems to swallow the entire myth of Mishima, an extreme right-wing nutjob who wanted to return Japan to samurai values. Philip Glass’s score, however, still takes the breath away.

Here is an American film, in Japanese with English subtitles, written, directed and photographed by Americans, made in Japan with a Japanese cast, which attempts to reveal the spiritual mysteries of a quintessentially Japanese phenomenon. That it doesn't succeed is almost a foregone conclusion. What is surprising, however, is that Mishima is as tolerable as it is, given all the strikes against it.

It's ironic, it was deadly ironic because it cost him his life, that Yukio Mishima, like many other right-wingers, saw and labeled the left as radical when he and his views are often extremist. The actions that led to his death are a clear example of this. Now, that in itself is a strong and fundamental part of what Paul Schrader's overall film comprises, one that finely exposes his unconventional approach by providing an astonishing audiovisual experience in which he masterfully combines diverse techniques that bring each passage of his subject's life to a different form of expression. Mishima is a symbiosis of the figure it portrays and how its director exposes him, breaking out of the mold of what could have been a biopic of a considerably predictable outcome. In the end it is not only a symbolic but an intimate exploration of his life, work and obsessions that ultimately led him to the actions that ended with his ritual suicide, which to a certain extent can even be considered the end point of his artistic work because he wished to leave a message with his death. This was a stunning film both thematically and visually.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

With Paul Schrader directing at his peak and Phillip Glass doing music at his peak, It is a hard movie to not appreciate. Except it is boring, I quit at 25 min. The best thing i can say is that it looks like a much older movie. But, Black Rain did the same thing way better in 1989.

Un film vaguement biographique inspiré du fait divers le plus marquant au Japon depuis longtemps, en l’occurrence le suicide public de Mishima, poète, écrivain, dramaturge et nostalgique du Japon Impérial et de son Empereur déifié, militariste convaincu obsédé par la voie du samouraï… et j’en passe et des meilleures… Soit pour résumer, un mégalomane irrécupérable, bouffi d’orgueil, une sorte de reliquat du Japon d’avant, celui des kamikazes et des « traditions » médiévales comme le « hara-kiri », la féodalité et tutti quanti… Le film dresse un portrait étonnant du cinglé qui a confondu le monde de ses livres avec la réalité ; un portrait qui semble parfois surréaliste et montré de temps à autre comme de simples saynètes, un théâtre non dissimulé et étrange des morceaux de vie de Yukio Mishima, toujours en décalage avec le monde et franchement névrosé, pour ne pas dire pire… Beaucoup de retours en arrière donc mais aussi beaucoup de confusion dans la narration, certainement bizarre et mal construite… on regrette également tout un tas de longueurs et/ou de lenteurs typiques de l’intello qui adore s’écouter parler (encore la mégalomanie galopante) et qui soliloque comme un détraqué. Bizarrement, la voix off reste en français mais les comédiens (tous japonais) ne sont jamais doublés… bizarre ! Notons que cette ambiance décidément très… étrange (ou bizarre !) est fort bien épaulée par la musique obsédante de Philip Glass, des ritournelles de violons quasi-hypnotiques, très caractéristiques de son style, assurément. L’impression finale reste elle aussi très étrange, entre perplexité, fascination pour l’homme fou (presque à lier) au jusque-boutisme sidérant et la torpeur certaine, teintée de prétention suspecte, véhiculée par ce film trop long et trop flagorneur…