Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Paul Schrader

Writers:

Yukio Mishima (life story and his novel)
Chieko Schrader (Japanese script)

Release Date:

20 September 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Tagline:

On November 25, 1970, Japan's greatest author Yukio Mishima commited an act that shocked the literary world...

Plot:

A fictionalized account in four segments of the life of Japan's celebrated twentieth-century author Yukio Mishima...

Plot Keywords:

Suicide | Revolt | Katana Sword | Scene Based On Painting | Army

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Ken Ogata	...	Yukio Mishima (segment "November 25, 1970")
Masayuki Shionoya	...	Morita (segment "November 25, 1970")
Hiroshi Mikami	...	Cadet #1 (segment "November 25, 1970")
Junya Fukuda	...	Cadet #2 (segment "November 25, 1970")
Shigeto Tachihara	...	Cadet #3 (segment "November 25, 1970")
Junkichi Orimoto	...	General Mashita (segment "November 25, 1970")
Naoko Otani	...	Mother (segment "Flashbacks")
Gô Rijû	...	Mishima, age 18-19 (segment "Flashbacks")
Masato Aizawa	...	Mishima - age 9-14 (segment "Flashbacks")
Yuki Nagahara	...	Mishima, age 5 (segment "Flashbacks")
Kyuzo Kobayashi	...	Literary Friend (segment "Flashbacks")
Yuki Kitazume	...	Dancing Friend (segment "Flashbacks")
Haruko Kato	...	Grandmother (segment "Flashbacks")
Yasosuke Bando	...	Mizoguchi (segment "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion")
Hisako Manda	...	Mariko (segment "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion")

Also Known As:

Mishima (USA) (short title)

Runtime:

121 min

Country:

USA

Language:

Japanese | English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Mexico:B15 (2009) | Argentina:18 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16 | UK:15 | Japan:(Banned) | Germany:16 | Canada:18A | Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Tokyo, Japan

Company:

American Zoetrope

Trivia:

The painting in the art book is one of six pictures of St. Sebastian by Guido Reni. This particular one was painted circa 1615 and is the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

Goofs:

Factual errors: General Mashita wiped the sword with tissue paper, not cloth.

Quotes:

Yukio Mishima (Narrator): Men wear masks to make themselves beautiful. But unlike a woman's, a man's determination to become beautiful is always a desire for death.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Sweets to the Sweet: The Candyman Mythos (2004) (V)

Brilliant, Magnificent -- But Not Flawless

Someone else put his finger on where this magnificent film falls short when he said, "Mishima has already said it all, the film simply repeats." Ultimately, Schrader has made a movie which refuses to comment on Mishima one way or another, and which becomes somewhat lifeless and stilted in the final segment as a result. Because he is bending over backwards not to criticize Mishima, Schrader simply refuses to examine the uglier implications of his public suicide.

Ironically, this approach hurts the film precisely because Mishima himself was capable of much more perceptive self-criticism. In the first two chapters -- "Beauty" (THE GOLDEN PAVILION) and "Art" (KYOKO'S HOUSE) Schrader's work is nothing short of brilliant. With great subtlety, he interweaves black and white scenes from Mishima's early life with lush full-color scenes from his early novels. What makes these sections so haunting are the subtle, suggestive differences between Mishima and the people he is writing about. For example, Mizoguchi, the acolyte who destroys the Golden Temple, is not a homosexual, nor is he a talented writer. His stammering could be a metaphor for those things, or it could be a metaphor for nothing at all. The mystery of creation and imagination, wordless and inexpressible, really seems to come to life here -- particularly in the dissolve where the schoolboy Mishima "morphs" into the slightly older Mizoguchi.

The problems start in the third chapter, "Action." Here Schrader films scenes from Mishima's RUNAWAY HORSES (one of my personal favorites) as if they are not just similar, but absolutely interchangeable with Mishima's militarist activities with the Shield Society. Schrader seems to assume that the hero of the novel, Isao, is simply a stand in for Mishima. How can you tell? Because Schrader cuts out precisely those sections of the novel in which Mishima actually analyzes Isao's emotions and his illusions. The Isao of this movie is merely a straw man who spouts platitudes about the emperor and Japan's greatness. The Isao of the book is a courageous, unselfish, but very human teenage boy, whose callous and narrow-minded parents are unable to love and who plainly have had a crushing effect on his psyche. Mishima, whether consciously or not, included some truly vile scenes of parental cruelty and manipulation in this book precisely because he understood on some level that Isao's decision to end his own life was not entirely unselfish. The connection between the sordid ugliness of Isao's loveless home and his desire to die a violent death is clear enough in the book. But it is absent from the movie. Oddly enough, Schrader thinks he is protecting Mishima in the last section, by not moralizing about the suicide, but he is actually diminishing him as an author.

The RUNAWAY HORSES section is by far the weakest of the movie. The final scenes, in which Mishima at the moment of death attains "oneness" with his heroes, really are quite exhilarating. But they would have been still richer if Schrader had taken a more nuanced approach to RUNAWAY HORSES, instead of just viewing it as a "blueprint" for the last events in Mishima's life.

This is unquestionably a brilliant, inspiring film, but it's not quite flawless.