In his best and most audacious movie, Paul Schrader blows up the literary biopic to give us not only insights into radical nationalist writer Yukio Mishima’s life, but also into his work. Mishima himself refused to separate the two, eventually leading his own private army. By incorporating large swathes of his fiction, Schrader suggests the life was a work of art; the body itself as a piece of theatre. Cinematographer John Bailey and production designer Eiko Ishioka devise bold aesthetics for each section, which are nevertheless compounded in a mesmerizing Philip Glass score. Last year, Indiewire critics voted this the second greatest film of the 1980s (just behind Do the Right Thing).
One of the most gorgeous and sophisticated portraits of an artist ever put on film.
Michael Sragow, New Yorker
The most unconventional biopic I’ve ever seen, and one of the best.
Roger Ebert
There are two types of people in this world: those who think Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters — a kaleidoscopic character study of author-turned-nationalist Yukio Mishima — is the greatest biopic of all time, and those who haven’t seen it. Schrader’s film gloriously dismisses the genre’s foundations, paints a delirious portrait of its controversial Japanese figure, and directly transmits his flamboyant and flamboyantly contradictory psyche into its viewers via lucid dream. There’s nothing quite like Mishima, and there may never be again. Schrader has turned the man’s life into a line of poetry written in a splash of blood.
Gus Edgar-Chan, Indiewire
Media Partner
Paul Schrader
Ken Ogata, Kenji Sawada, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Yasosuke Bando
USA
1985
In Japanese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Chieko Schrader, Paul Schrader, Leonard Schrader
Cinematography
John Bailey
Original Music
Philip Glass
Also in This Series
The Fall (4K Restoration)
Shot over four years across 24 countries, cowritten by a six year old girl, and entirely self-financed by commercials director Tarsem, The Fall is such a mind- (and eye) boggling movie it's hard to believe it actually exists. Yet here it is!
Winter Kills
An inspired black comic adaptation of the ultimate conspiracy theory, based on a novel by Richard (Manchurian Candidate) Condon. It's a lunatic riff on the Kennedy assassination(s), with Jeff Bridges finding who really killed his brother, the President. Screening in 35mm print.