Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

 

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

There are hard to find movies and then there are really hard to find movies. I had almost given up finding “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters”, which would make it the first, but finally, on a dodgy streaming service, hiding under being a trailer (at 2 hours...) I found it. I honestly do not mind paying for the movies I watch, and it pisses me off that I have to go to such extremes to watch something. At least the site did not insist on showing me advertisement for porn.

There is a rule of thumb on the List that that movies that are hard to find have disappeared for a reason, read: not worth watching. Luckily, we are not there. “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” is an interesting movie and certainly a different movie, but it is not an easy movie.

“Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” is a biopic, but quite unlike any biopic I have ever watched. Yukio Mishima was an author and playwright who was active from the forties until 1970 where his career ended most spectacularly. The biopic focuses on the essential theme in both Mishima’s writing and his life. A theme that hails the values and aesthetics of the samurai caste. The purity, the sacrifice, the stoicism and the idea of the glorious death.

While the movie takes us from his childhood to the fatal day in 1970, it also takes us on a tour through this world of Mishima, illustrated by enactments of some of his plays. While I do not understand all these plays are trying to tell, it is clear that they say a lot about Mishima, the way he thought and the message he tried to raise in his writings.

This all culminates in the fourth chapter, which is not a play, but Mishima (Ken Ogata) trying to convert his words into action, fiction into reality. In this enactment, he and some of his students take over an army base, proclaim their traditionalistic and militaristic program in an attempt to start a coup and then kill themselves, Mishima famously committing seppuku.

This format is better felt than understood and better to watch than explain. It is immersive, but also oblique because it does not explain anything. Even the narration (by Roy Scheider) is poetic rather than explanatory, enforcing the sense of experiencing Mishima rather than understanding him.

While this all takes place in Japan with a Japanese cast, it is more of an American production, with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers and direction by Paul Schrader of “Taxi Driver” fame. I understand that the official Japan has an issue with Mishima and hence this film and sees him as an embarrassment and maybe he is, but as he is presented in the movie he also represents an idea and aesthetic that is very much Japanese. I guess there is ambiguity in that.

As a biopic I found it very interesting because it never tries to reduce the person portrayed to something we, mere mortals, can comprehend, but tries, for better or worse to show us what made him special. A very difficult art that most biopics miss. For that alone this is worth watching, even if you get lost in everything else.