Mishima (1985) * * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: A magnificent and appropriately disturbing treatment of the life and times of Japan's most famous and controversial writer.
Yukio Mishima is the man Japan wants to forget, but cannot, and most of that may be due to the way he chose to live -- and end -- his life. On November 25, 1970, he occupied an army garrison with several comrades-in-arms, took a general hostage, and demanded to address the soldiers. After a nearly-inaudible harangue in which he tried to exhort the men to reinstate the Emperor as the absolute authority (instead of the prime minister), he went back inside amid jeering and insults. There, he committed seppuku, and was beheaded by one of his followers. What appalled his countrymen so much was not that he had killed himself, but that he had done so in a manner which had been considered gauche and tasteless -- and for something which most of his fellow Japanese no longer considered important.
But it was important to him, and MISHIMA, a complex and beautifully-mounted movie by Paul Schrader, works inside-out from the man's mind to show how he came to end his life in so theatrical and obsessive a fashion.
The movie opens on the day of his death and interleaves the action during that time with the rest of his life: his insecure, highly cloistered childhood (during which the seeds of his death-obsession and homosexuality sprouted); his confused youth (he was not drafted due to health reasons and never forgave himself for not being able to serve his country); and his meteoric rise to literary success. His own writings, which were often highly autobiographical in tone if not in fact, are spoken on the soundtrack by Roy Scheider. Mishima was an absorbing and highly skilled writer, and that is demonstrated to tremendous effect.
The movie's look deserves to be brought back in widescreen glory; the only prints available are on a panned-and-scanned VHS tape. Mishima's life is presented in crisp black-and-white; the scenes from his novels, which are used to comment on his own life and his perceptions of his country, are filmed in stylized, theatrical Technicolor, and shrouded in a pulsating and eerie Philip Glass score. The film is mostly in Japanese (Paul Schrader's script was translated) which provokes the question of whether a Japanese filmmaker could have treated this material at all.
If the movie has any failings, it's only because of the material's focus, and possibly because of restrictions on the subject matter imposed by his estate. Mishima's adult homosexuality is treated very quietly, and there's no mention of his wife and children. But none of these things detract from the movie's ultimate purpose: to show us a man, tortured and divided against himself, who chose to act on his beliefs to a degree that few men dared consider -- and to give us a sense of empathy for him, rather than scorn.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei [new email address coming soon] ICQ: 934998 http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... NEW WEB SITE: http://cablehouse.dyn.ml.org ...and the mandate of heaven you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth
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