Mishima: A Life In 4 Chapters (15.)
Directed by Paul Schrader. 1985
Starring Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami, Junya Fukuda, Shigeto Tachihara, Junkichi Orimoto, Naoko Otami, Go Riju, Masato Aizawa, Yuki Nagahara, Kyuzo Kobayashi, Yuki Kitazume and Roy Scheider 117 mins. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Paul Schrader is back in the limelight, or the murky corners of the limelight at least, thanks to his latest film First Reformed. So it is timely, fortunate, opportunistic even, for Criterion to be giving the full treatment to the film that is front and back, left and right, top and bottom, his artistic legacy. Yes, he usually dines out on being the scriptwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull but those were things he had a hand in making. (OK, Taxi Driver is his original conception but in his book Final Cut on the Heaven's Gate fiasco Steven Bach suggest the final Raging screenplay was De Niro's work.) Mishima though is his achievement; even though its greatness relies on the incredible contributions of a number of key collaborators.* He initiated the project but somewhere in its making it took off and became something that surpassed the combined talents of all concerned. Between the opening proclamation Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas Present to the closing shot of the rising red sun, this is one of American cinema's most ambitious achievements.
And it's a two-hands-tied-behind-your-back victory. It's got nothing going for it. The subject is a Japanese author, who could've but didn't win the Nobel prize. He was a gay, right-wing, narcissistic, masochistic, aesthete. He was obsessed with notions of glorious suicide. Then there were the practicalities of shooting in a language he didn't know, in a foreign country, with a foreign crew against a backdrop of threats and protests.
The post colon title is a little deceptive.
It's a film in four chapters, but constructed of three distinct strands:
“Flashbacks” - a succession of Mishimas growing up in black and white. He was taken from his mother as a baby by his grandmother who kept him indoors and made him nurse her. With her he grew up with a love of language, a physical passion for words.
“November 25th, 1970," - in colour, we see Ken Ogata's Mishima on his final day, enacting a kind of failed coup/ protest at a Tokyo military barracks with his own private army, before committing ritual suicide.
The third strand is highly stylized reenactments of sections from three of his novels: The Temple Of The Golden Pavillion, Kyoto's House, Runaway Horses.
Each is enthralling in its own way but it is the way they twist and twine together that is the film's ultimate triumph. Here is a filmmaker obsessed with transcendence, making a film about a writer's search for the transcendental who, for one film only, finds an improbable vehicle to achieving it.
Glass Work If You Can Get It.
And all this is set to a Philip Glass score. If we are doling out credit for what makes this film so special, the music should be right up there. This wasn't the first piece Glass had written for the flicks – there had been the epic Koyaanisqatsi score– or the first time the cinema had employed his tunes, Jim McBride used some of his seminal Glass Works album for his Breathless remake. This though is the first time he scored a narrative picture, had to make music fit to the action and he did it superbly. The film's brilliance is primarily in the way everything comes together, and the music is the force that ties it all up, and propels you through the bombardment of images.
All The Pretty Pictures.
I don't want to pick favourites but of the three strands, it is perhaps the startling stylisation of the novel sequences that infuse the film with its magic. Eiko Ishioka's set designs, (she had never worked for movie prior to this) are endlessly innovative, and endlessly ripped off. The falling panels set in Runaway Horse was borrowed for a perfume ad a few years ago. When executive producer Coppola saw them it must've represented the brief fruition of his Electric Cinema dreams, the ideas he explored in One From The Heart and Rumble Fish.
The Brother, his Girlfriend and the Miscast Lead.
The film marked the final break up of the relationship between Paul and his brother Leonard, who co-wrote the script, and yet again got treated abusively by Paul. (The story is covered in the extras.) Leonard's Japanese girlfriend Chieko directed all the actors.
The extensive extras reveal how unsuited Ogata is to play Mishima. Ogata is a powerful screen presence but Mishima was quite the dandy and with his long oblong head and very precise manner he was a mix of Oscar Wilde and Ian Fleming. Ogata is all tough guy. His English isn't as good either.
The Enigma.
Remarkable as the film is, it must be a failure as a study of the man, because the man seems to be unknowable. A controversial and divisive figure in his own country, he is impossible to get across to western viewers in two hours. Japanese cultural figures seem to multi-platform in an effortless way, incomprehensible to people outside. Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is known in the west as a great arthouse film director and deadpan actor but at home, he is a game show host, pundit, comedian, paper columnist and poet. Mishima's ability to be a masochistic homosexual with Western tastes while being a prominent right-winger who idolized the Emperor seems inexplicable, like Joe Orton running the National Front.
* At Cannes that year it won a prize for Best Artistic Contribution shared by cinematographer John Bailey, production designer Eiko Ishioka and composer Glass.
The Supplementary Material.
Criterion don't call them Extras, so neither shall I.
New, restored 4K digital transfer of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Directed by Paul Schrader. 1985
Starring Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami, Junya Fukuda, Shigeto Tachihara, Junkichi Orimoto, Naoko Otami, Go Riju, Masato Aizawa, Yuki Nagahara, Kyuzo Kobayashi, Yuki Kitazume and Roy Scheider 117 mins. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Paul Schrader is back in the limelight, or the murky corners of the limelight at least, thanks to his latest film First Reformed. So it is timely, fortunate, opportunistic even, for Criterion to be giving the full treatment to the film that is front and back, left and right, top and bottom, his artistic legacy. Yes, he usually dines out on being the scriptwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull but those were things he had a hand in making. (OK, Taxi Driver is his original conception but in his book Final Cut on the Heaven's Gate fiasco Steven Bach suggest the final Raging screenplay was De Niro's work.) Mishima though is his achievement; even though its greatness relies on the incredible contributions of a number of key collaborators.* He initiated the project but somewhere in its making it took off and became something that surpassed the combined talents of all concerned. Between the opening proclamation Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas Present to the closing shot of the rising red sun, this is one of American cinema's most ambitious achievements.
And it's a two-hands-tied-behind-your-back victory. It's got nothing going for it. The subject is a Japanese author, who could've but didn't win the Nobel prize. He was a gay, right-wing, narcissistic, masochistic, aesthete. He was obsessed with notions of glorious suicide. Then there were the practicalities of shooting in a language he didn't know, in a foreign country, with a foreign crew against a backdrop of threats and protests.
The post colon title is a little deceptive.
It's a film in four chapters, but constructed of three distinct strands:
“Flashbacks” - a succession of Mishimas growing up in black and white. He was taken from his mother as a baby by his grandmother who kept him indoors and made him nurse her. With her he grew up with a love of language, a physical passion for words.
“November 25th, 1970," - in colour, we see Ken Ogata's Mishima on his final day, enacting a kind of failed coup/ protest at a Tokyo military barracks with his own private army, before committing ritual suicide.
The third strand is highly stylized reenactments of sections from three of his novels: The Temple Of The Golden Pavillion, Kyoto's House, Runaway Horses.
Each is enthralling in its own way but it is the way they twist and twine together that is the film's ultimate triumph. Here is a filmmaker obsessed with transcendence, making a film about a writer's search for the transcendental who, for one film only, finds an improbable vehicle to achieving it.
Glass Work If You Can Get It.
And all this is set to a Philip Glass score. If we are doling out credit for what makes this film so special, the music should be right up there. This wasn't the first piece Glass had written for the flicks – there had been the epic Koyaanisqatsi score– or the first time the cinema had employed his tunes, Jim McBride used some of his seminal Glass Works album for his Breathless remake. This though is the first time he scored a narrative picture, had to make music fit to the action and he did it superbly. The film's brilliance is primarily in the way everything comes together, and the music is the force that ties it all up, and propels you through the bombardment of images.
All The Pretty Pictures.
I don't want to pick favourites but of the three strands, it is perhaps the startling stylisation of the novel sequences that infuse the film with its magic. Eiko Ishioka's set designs, (she had never worked for movie prior to this) are endlessly innovative, and endlessly ripped off. The falling panels set in Runaway Horse was borrowed for a perfume ad a few years ago. When executive producer Coppola saw them it must've represented the brief fruition of his Electric Cinema dreams, the ideas he explored in One From The Heart and Rumble Fish.
The Brother, his Girlfriend and the Miscast Lead.
The film marked the final break up of the relationship between Paul and his brother Leonard, who co-wrote the script, and yet again got treated abusively by Paul. (The story is covered in the extras.) Leonard's Japanese girlfriend Chieko directed all the actors.
The extensive extras reveal how unsuited Ogata is to play Mishima. Ogata is a powerful screen presence but Mishima was quite the dandy and with his long oblong head and very precise manner he was a mix of Oscar Wilde and Ian Fleming. Ogata is all tough guy. His English isn't as good either.
The Enigma.
Remarkable as the film is, it must be a failure as a study of the man, because the man seems to be unknowable. A controversial and divisive figure in his own country, he is impossible to get across to western viewers in two hours. Japanese cultural figures seem to multi-platform in an effortless way, incomprehensible to people outside. Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is known in the west as a great arthouse film director and deadpan actor but at home, he is a game show host, pundit, comedian, paper columnist and poet. Mishima's ability to be a masochistic homosexual with Western tastes while being a prominent right-winger who idolized the Emperor seems inexplicable, like Joe Orton running the National Front.
* At Cannes that year it won a prize for Best Artistic Contribution shared by cinematographer John Bailey, production designer Eiko Ishioka and composer Glass.
The Supplementary Material.
Criterion don't call them Extras, so neither shall I.
New, restored 4K digital transfer of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Two alternate English narrations, including one by actor Roy Scheider
- Audio commentary from 2006 featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul
- Interviews from 2007 and 2008 with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka
- Interviews from 2008 with Yukio Mishima biographer John Nathan and friend Donald Richie
- Audio interview from 2008 with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader
- Interview excerpt from 1966 featuring Mishima talking about writing
- The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a documentary from 1985 about the author
- Trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kevin Jackson, a piece on the film’s censorship in Japan, and photographs of Ishioka’s sets.
