"In my earliest years, I realized that life consisted of two contradictory elements. One was words, which could change the world. The other was the world itself, which had nothing to do with words."
This dramatization of the life of author/actor/nationalist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is told in a creative way by Paul Schrader, with the flashbacks of his life intertwined with enactments of a few of his stories. The visuals are dramatic and there is a certain poetry to it all, but ultimately it wasn't something I cared for because the man was a right-wing nationalist, and the stories which mirrored his fanaticism weren't at all of interest to me. He was a complex guy to be sure - a man who believed in traditional values but was also gay, a man of letters who also took up bodybuilding, and a man who believed in dying for his ideals but who was declared unfit to serve in WWII (though this latter bit was apparently skewed in the telling here as him faking the illness, which I'm sure the real Mishima would have hated). I don't know though, to make such a film about a guy who killed himself after trying to overthrow the Constitution and whose last words were "Long Live the Emperor!" ... it was tough for me to find stirring. Great filmmaking by Schrader, but poor subject, at least for my taste.
This dramatization of the life of author/actor/nationalist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is told in a creative way by Paul Schrader, with the flashbacks of his life intertwined with enactments of a few of his stories. The visuals are dramatic and there is a certain poetry to it all, but ultimately it wasn't something I cared for because the man was a right-wing nationalist, and the stories which mirrored his fanaticism weren't at all of interest to me. He was a complex guy to be sure - a man who believed in traditional values but was also gay, a man of letters who also took up bodybuilding, and a man who believed in dying for his ideals but who was declared unfit to serve in WWII (though this latter bit was apparently skewed in the telling here as him faking the illness, which I'm sure the real Mishima would have hated). I don't know though, to make such a film about a guy who killed himself after trying to overthrow the Constitution and whose last words were "Long Live the Emperor!" ... it was tough for me to find stirring. Great filmmaking by Schrader, but poor subject, at least for my taste.