Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, USA)

I’ve seen Mishima twice now, and I still can’t think of another non-Japanese director who could have approached the material quite as well as Paul Schrader does. Schrader and Mishima have quite a bit in common, in fact – wildly uneven artistic careers, trademark obsessional natures, and deep-rooted sexual hang-ups, to name a few. I’ve seen about half of Schrader’s films to date, and a few more of those that he’s written but not directed, and I have to say that Mishima is my favorite (though I must admit that I have a soft spot for Auto Focus).

The film is comprised of three intertwining threads – biography elements from Mishima’s life, selections from three of his novels, and a staging of the events of the morning of November 25, 1970. Yukio Mishima is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, contemporary Japanese writer. Beyond his novels, plays, essays and poetry, he was a filmmaker, bodybuilder and a rather unique political activist. On the date mentioned, Mishima and four members of his personal army barricaded themselves in the office of a Japanese Army general as an act of political and personal revolution. If he was not already a pivotal figure in Japanese culture, the events of that day certainly made him one.

One of the prime Japanese leading men of the 1980’s, Ken Ogata gives an extraordinary performance as Mishima. Watching for a second time, I was amazed by Schrader’s ability to direct actors in a language he is not apparently fluent in (sister-in-law Chieko Schrader wrote the Japanese script from Paul and his brother Leonard’s original). However, my favorite segments are the three novel excerpts, which don’t feature Mishima as a character at all (at least, not explicitly). The use of the word “lush” wouldn’t come close to describing the production design, which is unabashedly theatrical and innovatively filmed. The novel sections pull out and examine some of Mishima’s favorite themes – beauty, art, national pride, sexuality – and together with the other two segments, show how these themes ran in and out of the author’s life as well as his work. This tight focus on the novels also highlights one of the other extraordinary elements of Mishima - the fact that it is almost entirely interior. The film attempts to capture the life and work of a man in his own words, fifteen years after his death (and by a foreigner, nonetheless!). It’s incredibly ballsy on Schrader’s part, but all the more amazing for its success.