:
Ken Ogata,
Ken Ogata,
Masayuki Shionoya,
more...
:
Paul Schrader,
Paul Schrader
see all cast/crew...
: 
: Criterion
: Action, Drama, Foreign, Biopics, Japan, Adventure, Criterion Collection
: English, French, Japanese
: English, French, Japanese
see additional details...
|
|
In Paul Schrader's unusual biopic, Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese novelist of the last five decades. The film begins with Mishima's youth, then moves forward in episodic fashion to his 1970 suicide, symbolically committed at a military site. Originally titled Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the film is neatly divided into a quartet of acts, and the screenplay does not flinch in its depiction of Mishima's hyperactive sex life. Among the many neat directorial touches is the decision to offer the narrative in black-and-white, while depicting scenes from Mishima's novels in vibrant color. Written off as self-indulgent by those impatient with Schrader's fragmentary technique, Mishima was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, an offshoot of Coppola's involvement with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
|
|
|
|
| Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Criterion) (Bonus Disc) (1985) |
 add to list
|
|
|
|
| Overlooked masterpiece
by ColonelKong
May 4, 2003 - 10:25 AM PDT
|
|
|
9 out of 9 members found this review helpful
|
I think Mishima is possibly Paul Schrader's best directing effort (to be fair, I haven't seen everything he's directed) and that it's right up there with Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ (all written by Schrader for Martin Scorsese). This film is a bit of an oddity in that it's a Japanese film with a gaijin director that wasn't released in Japan, but that and it's too-strange-to-be-fiction story aren't the only thing that make it unlike any other movie I've seen. Much like the film's contradictory main character, the visuals frequently take a complete 180-degree turn, going from the documentary-style scenes of Mishima's last day, to B&W flashbacks, to wildy theatrical candy-colored visualizations of three of Mishima's novels. The excellent score by Philip Glass also contributes a great deal to the film.
I think Mishima is possibly the best movie about a cult leader (so to speak) that I've ever seen, and that Schrader does as good a job as anyone else could have of getting inside his head. I never hear anyone talk about the movie that much and I ended up kind of discovering it on my own, why it isn't discussed more often, I don't know. Overall, highly recommended whether you know anything about Yukio Mishima or not.
|
|
|
More reviews for titles in this product:
|
|
 |
| Movies About Writers |
|
|
| Some of the best films about writers, although very few get the writer's life exactly write, er, right. Writers, we're a mopey, lonely lot according to most films. (Well, that part's accurate.) |
GreenCineStaff
|
|
 |
|
|
|
see all lists |
|
|
Your cart
gabeandnaoko
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.