1985 Directed by Paul Schrader
A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima told in four parts. The first three parts relate events in three of his novels: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kyoko's House, and Runaway Horses. The last part depicts the events of 25th November 1970.
Ken Ogata Go Riju Masayuki Shionoya Hiroshi Mikami Junkichi Orimoto Masato Aizawa Junya Fukuda Shigeto Tachihara Yuki Nagahara Kyuzo Kobayashi Yuki Kitazume Haruko Katō Bandō Mitsugorō X Hisako Manda Naomi Oki Miki Takakura Imari Tsujikoichi Sato Koichi Sato Kenji Sawada Reisen Ri Setsuko Karasuma Tadanori Yokoo Yasuaki Kurata Mitsuru Hirata Toshiyuki Nagashima Hiroshi Katsuno Naoya Makoto Hiroki Ida Jun Negami Show All…
Mishima: Une vie en quatre chapitres, Mishima: Een Leven in Vier Stromen, ミシマ:ア・ライフ・イン・フォー・チャプターズ, Mishima: una vida en cuatro capítulos, 미시마 - 그의 인생, Mishima – Ein Leben in vier Kapiteln, Mishima: Una vida en cuatro capítulos, Mishima - elämän neljä lukua, Mishima, Mishima: Una vita in quattro capitoli, 미시마, Mishima: Uma Vida em Quatro Tempos, Мисима: Жизнь в четырёх главах, 三岛由纪夫传
FranceU
USAR
AustraliaM
PortugalM/16
Netherlands16
Germany
Netherlands16
France
Australia
France
Germany
Netherlands
Portugal
USA
100/100
Absolutely flawless. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters takes a man who yearned to be an work of art and transforms his life into that very idea, constructing a stunning biopic of immense beauty that flows right alongside his hopes, dreams, desires, and realities. Split into four chapters (obviously), Paul Schrader builds a testament to Yukio Mishima (his pen-name) and his never-ending quest for successful nationalism by enriching moments from his multiple novels.
These segments, which make up most of the first three parts, feel universally personal in spite of their gorgeous and operatic flavor, exploding and crumbling in various ways that evoke the visualization of fleeting memories. While Mishima focuses on many important plot points like other traditional…
Overwhelmingly beautiful to a point where I definitely owe it a revisit because before I could fully digest one line, we were on to another even more layered piece of writing. Maybe one of the best written films I've seen, one of my new favorite endings, and EASILY my new favorite score.
I am so late to this train but Paul Schrader is the freaking MAN.
this is beyond my brain capacity and it's impossible for me to say something eloquent but, my god, is it beautiful
"A man's desire to become beautiful is also a desire for death."
Harmonizes actual events of Mishima's life, his nationalism, his persona as an artist, his fiction, and his own self-image, ultimately fully empathizing with his will to power and violent transcendence.
The Harmony of the Pen and the Sword, or "turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood."
At first glance, a biopic about a celebrated and controversial Japanese author might not seem like an obvious move for Paul Schrader but I think once you realize the kind of troubled, lonely, self-destructive outsider minds he’s attracted to and obsessed with (ones frequently looking to transcend their earthly punishments and express their ideas in writing/their rage in cathartic, cleansing, redemptive violence that they train and prepare for) it becomes quite clear what brought him to make a film about Yukio Mishima... And how lucky we are that the very stylized work of the man himself and…
“I wanted to explode, light the sky for an instant and disappear.”
Paul Schrader's magnum opus, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, recounts the life of a man who lived life on a precipice. Yukio Mishima was a prolific and influential writer whose avant-garde works often broke traditional styles of aesthetics with an explicit focus on sexuality, death, and notions of political radicalism. The film considers Mishima’s life in four distinct segments, leading to the last day of his life as he performs seppuku after a failed military coup.
In stark black and white, we see Mishima’s formative years as he is forced to confront his perceived inadequacies: his buried bisexuality and small physical frame. In florid colour paired with…
"Creating something beautiful and becoming
beautiful oneself are indistinguishable."
"I come out on the stage determined to make
people weep. Instead, they burst out laughing."
"...I don't think they even heard me."
Since moving to Japan, I've discovered that Yukio Mishima is still, to this day, a sore subject. In casual conversation about Japanese authors or in the classroom, the moment I mention Mishima an uncomfortable silence settles over the room. I've learnt not to mention my love of Spring Snow and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. I get the tension. Mishima was a brilliant writer, but an unbelievably problematic person. Politically, he stands against everything I believe in, and he is a hero to Japan's infuriating nationalists whose vans that pump awful militaristic tunes have become the bane of my Sunday mornings. This complexity is exactly what makes Mishima such a fascinating subject to be deconstructed on…
Watch a man pursue for the purest form of beauty, in words and images, in the human body and for the briefest moment, in love, before he switched to outright violence and destruction, then ceases to be a man and becomes the very embodiment of his ideas, it doesn't get more poetic than this.
Philosophy and aesthetic above all else (though it is difficult to determine whether Mishima is an artist embracing his philosophy, or the other way round), he proves this by wearing the japanese flag on his forehead -- the uppermost part of his body, where it is closest to his conscience. If his emperor is the sun, then the flag is the emperor's silhouette casted on pure white backdrop, and what is the sun but a symmetrical splash of blood, left behind by a man searching for a purpose, a meaning, a purity that is absolute, even in death.
