Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

French movie poster
Directed by Paul Schrader
Produced by Mataichiro Yamamoto
Francis Ford Coppola
George Lucas
Tom Luddy
Leonard Schrader
Mata Yamamoto
Written by Leonard Schrader
Paul Schrader
Chieko Schrader
(Original Stories)
Yukio Mishima
Starring Ken Ogata
Masayuki Shionoya
Junkichi Orimoto
Kenji Sawada
Music by Philip Glass
Cinematography John Bailey
Editing by Michael Chandler
Distributed by American Zoetrope
Lucasfilm Ltd.
M Company
Tristone Entertainment Inc.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s) USA October 4, 1985
Running time 120 min
Language Japanese
Budget $500,0000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an episodic, stylized 1985 film directed by Paul Schrader and written by Paul and Leonard Schrader, his brother. It is based on the life and fiction of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film features original music by Philip Glass with performances by the Kronos Quartet. Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima and Roy Scheider speaks an off-screen English narration, also as Mishima. The film was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (while they were involved with Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha).

The four chapters are "Beauty", "Art", "Action" and "Fusion of Pen and Sword". Each chapter features flashback scenes from Mishima's life shot in lustrous black and white, intercut with highly-stylized, theatrical scenes from three different Mishima novels and the realistically-shot, docudrama-style story of Mishima's last day and seppuku. The novels depicted in the film are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) in "Beauty"; Kyoko's House (1959) in "Art"; and Runaway Horses (1968) in "Action". In the final chapter, the protagonists of all three novels are shown achieving their destructive and/or suicidal objectives as Mishima commits suicide.

The soundtrack follows the different visual styles, accompanying the black-and-white flashbacks with a string quartet, the theatrical scenes with a string orchestra and synthesizers, and the "docudrama" scenes with a full symphonic orchestra.

Schrader has said that he considers Mishima the best film he has directed: "It's the one I'd stand by - as a screenwriter it's Taxi Driver, but as a director it's Mishima." (Schrader on Schrader and Other Writings (2004) (ISBN 0-571-22176-9))

[edit] Controversy

This film has never had an official release in Japan due to the controversy around Mishima himself, and due to the wishes of Mishima's family. Despite this, it has broadcast several times on Japanese TV (with a scene in a gay bar edited out) and it is legal to import the DVD there.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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