Review: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1982)

American director/screenwriter Paul Schrader's groundbreaking and immaculate Japanese language biopic of controversial Japanese writer Yukio Mishima not only manages to be an amazing portrait of an artist and his beliefs, but also an utterly fascinating and enrapturing artistic work of its own.

Spooling with practiced precision for two hours and ten minutes, Schrader's intense and absorbing meditation on the truly mysterious Mishima brilliantly sidesteps the traditional biopic format. Instead of a straightforward recounting of Mishima's life, we're instead treated to a dreamlike, meditative examination of both the man, and his work.

As its title indicates, the film is split into four portions, with each portion focusing on a bedrock aspect of Mishima's life and philosophy. Within those subdivisions, Schrader leaps elegantly and flawlessly between the key moments of Mishima's life, such as his childhood under his grandmother's Oedipal thumb, or his steady rejection of modernism in favor of radical traditionalism, to Mishima's final day, on which he attempted a coup and then committed seppuku.

Interwoven with those flashbacks and present day scenes are intense and deliberately flamboyant dramatizations of three novels by Mishima: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kyoko's House, and Runaway Horses. Each of the three segments serves as a conduit and demonstration of Mishima's beliefs, and, in their own way, reveal the inner workings of his mind, and his steady slide into self destruction.

This is all held together not only by Schrader's expert direction, but also a bevy of Japanese actors, all of whom perform their roles expertly and naturalistically. Coupled with their performances is absolutely brilliant cinematography by American cinematographer John Bailey, who films each segment with its own unique pallet, combined with deliberately stylized and fascinating art direction.

Mishima's final day is filmed in matter-of-fact muted colors, while his flashbacks are in crisp black and white. Even each novel gets its own color scheme: The Temple of the Golden Pavillon, in which a stuttering aspirant sets fire to a golden Buddhist temple out of his belief that its beauty mocks him, is filmed in saturated gold and green. The disturbing sadomasochistic Kyoko's House, in which a young stud pays off a debt by engaging in a sadomasochistic, and ultimately suicidal, sexual relationship with an older woman, is bathed in neon pinks and grays. The stark and pessimistic Runaway Horses is equally stark with black, white and orange dominating the color palette, as a group of radical political students attempt to overthrow the government, only to fail and commit seppuku. Each sequence has a perfect emotional color spectrum, and the colors blend into an almost fever dream like aura of deliberate exaggeration and hyper expression, and in doing so, set the moods and tones perfectly.

But, really, this film's ultimate greatest strength is Philip Glass' magnum opus of a film score. Swirling and tumbling in a dreamlike dance of repeated rhythms and motifs, Glass' music is the very soul of the film, and carries with it a bevy of complex emotions and feelings. Its possibly one of the greatest film scores ever written, and not only serves as an absolutely perfect compliment to Schrader's dreamlike visuals, but also stands as a true work of art on its own.

So, suffice to say, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, is one of the most stunningly beautiful and unique films I've ever seen. It is truly an art film in the sense that not only is it a brilliant example of film as a storytelling tool, but its also a tantamount example of film as pure artistic expression.

Uncompromising and fascinating, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a dazzling masterpiece.

5 out of 5 stars.