Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters depicts the life and work of Japan’s most controversial author, Yukio Mishima. Famous for both his beautiful, metaphor-laden writing for which he came close to winning the Nobel Prize in literature, and for his fascistic, militarist beliefs, for which he was hated – especially after he turned those beliefs into action.

The film is a mixture of excerpts from his autobiographical writings, accounts of the day he died, as well as depiction of his novels. The director, Paul Schrader, decides to depict three of Mishima’s novels, not necessarily for the sake of telling their stories, but as a way to give us an insight into the author’s psyche. The three novels depict a main character’s unhealthy obsession with something in its purest form, be it beauty, strength or patriotism, which coincidentally were themes that would haunt Mishima until the day he died. The novels shown in the film, depicted on stunningly colorful and stylishly minimalist theatre stages, are mere fragments of the original novels, chosen for their importance in understanding the ultimate enigma of Mishima himself.

What emerges is a collage-like portrait of an author whose life was characterized by a constant tension between his thoughts and his actions. His life goal, as it developed, eventually became to unify these two, or as the film puts it, to create a harmony of pen and sword.

Paul Schrader

USA, Japan

1985

Blu-ray

120 minutes 

Japanese language, English subtitles

Written by Aslak Leo Jåsund