Critic Reviews
84
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
12(80%)
mixed
3(20%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 15 Critic Reviews
100
The most unconventional biopic I've ever seen, and one of the best.
100
Beautiful, yet flawed film.
100
Calling Schrader's masterpiece a mere biopic doesn't do it justice. It's more a dreamy, hypnotic meditation on the tragic intersection of Mishima's oeuvre and existence that takes place as much in its subject's fevered imagination as the outside world.
100
Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.
100
One of the most gorgeous and sophisticated portraits of an artist ever put on film.
100
One of the year`s boldest, most successful films, a film full of ideas that challenges us to examine how we conduct our lives, while at the same time dazzling us with extraordinary visuals.
100
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]
90
A sumptuous austerity, paralleling Mishima’s disciplined decadence.
80
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.
80
A beautiful, deadly serious attempt by Paul and Leonard Schrader to illuminate the life--and death--of one of Japan's most highly visible and self-propelling enigmas.
