#44 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: Mishima: A life in four chapters

The Film: Mishima: A life in four chapters

I first heard of Yukio Mishima in my Tokugawa history course. We were discussing the modern practice of Harakiri (or Seppuku if you want to be formal about it) and Yukio briefly came up as one of the last people to actual perform the ritual. I was instantly fascinated by him – reading his biography and watching a documentary available in our library. This guy was unbelievable.

I can’t really say how famous Mishima was in Japan, because I wasn’t there, but I can gather from how prolific his writing was and how much respect he garnered that he was a major player in the intellectual realm. It is hard to consider an American equilivalent. A novelist, actor, playwright, director, and poet – the list goes on. Maybe we could consider him similar to Orson Welles in his prime. Then again, Welles wasn’t a novelist.  A good Italian equivalent is novelist, poet, filmmaker, actor Pier Pasolini. (Netflix him now if you haven’t heard of him)

Nonetheless, Mishima was a genius and Paul Shrader (writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) gives him a damn good biopic.

Why to watch it: Few true stories involving pop icons are quite so bizarre.

Yukio, indeed, was a pop icon and Paul Shrader takes an unusual approach to the novelist’s life. The film has many flashbacks and covers the story of Yukio attempting a coup, then committing suicide, but Shrader also includes live action excerpts of Mishima’s most biographical novels.

What a bold move by Shrader; a move that I despised for a long time. I finally got over the idea and decided to sit down and watch it. Shrader was correct, it was the right choice. Artists’ work, especially the greatest novelists, are often based on their own life, if not outright biographical. Mishima was no different, often writing without opacity about his life through his characters and stories.

The three works chosen quite clearly highlight Mishima’s road to self-destruction. He was the ultimate artist, creating a drama where he was the central figure and a tragedy that had the classic Shakespearan ending. His death is tragic, but cannot, even for a moment, be pitied. He was an intelligent man (if not a bit crazy), had plenty of money, and was at no moment unable to control his actions. The stories he wrote clearly indicated his strengths and weaknesses, as well as his plans for suicide, had been with him since a young age – this was a not a rash decision.

Pay attention to this: The characterization of Mishima.

The movie presents Mishima in a very specific way – it never pities him. The movie respects him for his eccentric behavior and tremendous talent, but also (maybe most importantly) shows him as a pleasant, warm individual; he would make people laugh and often hold a room well.

I liked this movie a lot because I found I was fascinated by Mishima – what an astounding real life character he was. Paul Shrader, a quiet great, has always made movies about individuals who struggle between passions and belief. I’m talking about Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Last Temptation of Christ, and Hardcore, to name a few. Recently, Shrader, in an e-mail to Roger Ebert, claimed that You Don’t Know Jack, a movie about Jack Kevorkian’s life and his dealings with assisted suicide, was the best of the year. I smirked at that – it would be his favorite wouldn’t it?

-Collin