• Mishima

5/3/20 (Sun)

Paul Schrader’s 1985 film biography is to this day not available in Japan despite being entirely in Japanese and featuring some noted Japanese stars. Mishima is known for his extreme conservative views, but his criticism of Emperor Showa for renouncing his godliness (Mishima felt that this meant that Japanese soldiers went to war for nothing) was a step too far even for his fellow far-rightists, who do not take well to any bad-mouthing of the imperial family. Mishima’s works are one thing, but a story about his life, which must inevitably deal with the circumstances of his self-disembowelment, is politically an untouchable subject – and the right wing in particular can be very unpleasant about these things. Mishima’s widow was also upset by the references to Mishima’s homosexuality, which she was not entirely able to purge from the film. So I was surprised at a friend’s house to find a copy of the DVD that had been purchased in the US, which I promptly borrowed.

The film follows Mishima through the final day of his life when he famously commits seppuku after a failed coup at a Tokyo military base. It intermingles this adeptly with evocative black-and-white flashbacks from the author’s youth along with surreally colored passages from three of his novels (Kinkakuji, Kyoko’s House and Forbidden Colors) reflecting facets of his life. Elements also creep in from Confessions of a Mask (such as the worship of Guido Reni’s St Sebastian painting, though thankfully he doesn’t masturbate to it here) and Patriotism (preparation for seppuku). The prism of past and present, fiction and nonfiction, reality and fantasy illuminates the life of its subject as well as any biographical film that I’ve ever seen. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it: the Kinkakuji sequence, for instance, seems to be implying that the protagonist destroys the temple because he feels it overshadows his own beauty, which is not how I remember the book. But it works in the film on its own terms. The climax of all three strands come together at the dramatic end, suggesting that Mishima’s life has finally merged with his art.

Ogata Ken, though not overly charismatic, did project authority and performed credibly as the title character, right down to the chest hair. (The original choice was Takakura Ken, who proposed the project in the first place but reportedly pulled out under right-wing pressure.) The fictional sequences, memorably dramatized, stood out especially for their strikingly colorful design by Ishioka Eiko, who was deservedly recognized at Cannes. The inspired music was by Philip Glass (!). Paul Schrader wrote the superb book with his brother Leonard, who evidently lived in Japan for some time (and whose Japanese wife translated the original script). Though the producers included no less than Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the film was unsurprisingly a commercial failure in light of its subject matter, its complex multi-tiered approach and the unavailability of the huge Japanese market. But its expert weaving of the real and unreal makes it a perfect examination of an impossibly complex life. Great film.