It would take far more familiarity than I have with the life and work of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima to fully engage with this big, bicultural swing from writer-director Paul Schrader. Yet Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters does seem to contain an exchange in keeping with the Schrader I know (director of the likes of Hardcore and First Reformed, as well as screenwriter of Martin Scorsese pictures, including Taxi Driver). “Total purity is not possible in this world,” one man tells another in one of the occasional dramatizations of Mishima’s many works. “Yes it is,” the second man replies, “if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.” There you have it: purity/impurity, violence, and the salvific power of art. The exchange only fails to mention another Schrader obsession: sex (although Mishima’s thorough exploration of the writer’s sexual experiences and preferences give plenty of attention to that). Ken Ogata plays Mishima at the end of his life, yet this is less a biopic than a philosophical exercise. It also might be Schrader’s most visually bold work, particularly the sequences in which the set design by Kyoji Sasaki, art direction by Kazuo Takenaka, production design by Eiko Ishioka, and cinematography by John Bailey evoke Mishima’s novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, on a single set. Throbbing with golds, greens, and reds, it’s clearly fabricated, yet as emotionally authentic as anything else in the movie. Mishima also benefits from a Philip Glass score, which offers a swirling throughline, an auditory search for transcendence of the sort Mishima also apparently pursued.
(3/25/2023)
