Hey guys, I wish I had a bit more time to work on this because I have about a million things buzzing around my head when it comes to this endlessly fascinating film, I don't think I even brought up half of the interesting aspects we could cover. Can't wait to see what comes of the discussion.
I do not have the most experience with Paul Schrader the director. I am of course familiar with Paul Schrader the screenwriter of such Scorsese films as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I am also familiar with the basic idea of Paul Schrader, the film enthusiast who grew up strict Dutch Calivinist, whose parents did not allow him to see movies. I've seen Mishima around three or four times now, and I can certainly say that I'm going to be checking out some Schrader directed films in the near future.
One of the fatal flaws of most biopics is to attempt to portray the entire lives of their subjects. And no matter how much they stuff their bloated running times with irrelevant details they still feel rushed, more like attempts to capture period details than to make full blooded films. Especially films about artists, which more often than not wax reductionist about the impetus behind the work. Schrader must have known that telling the tale of Mishima's life, death and works in little under two hours would have been a tall order indeed. Schrader and his cinematographer, John Bailey, attempt to do this by mixing up the narrative using different styles to signify different things. Mishima's march towards his own suicide, filmed like a conspiracy thriller, flows effortlessly into luminescent black and white memories which in turn flow into the gaudy theatrical sets of Mishima's works. I think that each one is pulled off immaculately, this movie, if nothing else, is a multi-course feast for the eyes. What we have here amounts to something like an epic yet intimate psychological study of a fascinating figure. Ken Ogata gives an incredible performance bringing an amazing amount of charisma and joy to the character but also able to give the coldest stare or the maddest glance. For a film in which he appears fairly little for a biopic, he really carries much of the film on his shoulders, creating an emotional human connection in a film that sometimes may appear dry or academic. The entire twisting narrative is anchored by his voiceover (which was dubbed by Roy Schneider in the American release). In fact, he provides so many quips and drops so many strange philosophical musings that it seems at first that the films themes are simply stated right off by the main character. But while lines about beauty and death and art enfuse the film, I don't think that we're supposed to take them alone as representative of the themes of the film as a whole.
Behind every smile and laugh there is a supreme self-hatred around Mishima, throughout the movie we see him trying to transform himself from a man of words to a man of action, from a sickly draft-dodger to a living embodiment of bushido ideals and the pinnacle of masculine beauty. Although he preaches the unity of pen and sword, he seems at times frustrated with the pen altogether, perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase from the Kyoko's House sequence "stage blood is not enough" stage blood was obviously not nearly enough for Mishima, whose explicit portrayel of seppuku in his film Patriotism (analyzed excellently by Ed Howard) was only a forerunner for what was to come. Did Mishima really believe that he could start a coup? That he would be able to return the Emperor to a position of utmost power, that he could drive away all the “capitalists” from Japan? It doesn't even seem to be the point. Mishima's far-right political views seem more the result of his own psycho-sexual neuroses, and a part of his own inevitable march towards death than true conviction. It does raise the question however, how are we to take it that this film follows so sympathetically someone who, in essence, attempted to start what looks remarkably like a fascist coup? How are we to take scenes like the murder of Kurahara, scored to Glass' soaring score?
89 comments:
Yeah the formatting is a bit messed up. Guess I just need to get back in the blogging biz and relearn the ropes. I'll be fixing it (and adding more pics) throughout the day.
Excellent job teasing out the undercurrents of this fascinating, complex film, Krauthammer. This was a great choice and I'm glad you picked it. Thanks for the link to my Patriotism review, as well.
Anyway, I found Mishima to be an utterly amazing film, and there's so much to talk about here. I'll have more to say later, but for now I want to point out just how wonderful the film's structure is. The subtitle breaks the film into "four chapters," but each one corresponds not so much to a particular period in the subject's life as to a particular idea about him: "beauty," "art," "action," "harmony of pen and sword." Within each chapter, Schrader weaves together three different types of scenes, each with its own distinct aesthetic: flashbacks to Mishima's past (in black and white), scenes from his novels (in stylized, oversaturated color) and scenes from his last day alive (in a flat, naturalistic color that reminds me, perhaps intentionally, of the muted tones in Ozu's color films). The overall effect is to stress the way Mishima's art and life bled together, since one of Mishima's goals, as repeatedly stated in the film, was to create a unity between art and action. Sometimes, Schrader even cuts directly from Mishima's character to a character in one of the novels, emphasizing the author's autobiographical connection to the fictional characters he created.
Krauthammer, the formatting gives it the appearance of different looks for each paragraph. I honestly thought you were doing it on purpose as a sly commentary on the film's narrative style (just say you were and leave it at that).
This line in your write-up {"more like attempts to capture period details") to describe biopics is brilliantly expressed. That is in fact how I view most biopics but this one is so different it's like breathing mountain air after being stuck in a subway tunnel for three hours during rush hour. The idea of using different dramatizations from his own works to narrate his life is inspired, I think.
His suicide is to Mishima an artistic statement of course so no, I don't think his speech matters as much as the drama of it. But I do believe that he wanted what he said because the bushido code was something only the military could spread throughout the nation under Imperial rule. I think the code was something deeply expressive and emotive to him.
I saw this film when it was released, and I was rather disappointed. I'm a big fan of Mishima's work, and I just didn't see the complex philosophies and strangely feminine POV of his works in this picture. On second viewing, and perhaps because I am much farther removed from the literature, I think Schrader captured some of the essence of Mishima. I like that he used the literature to try to tease out who Mishima was. I think, however, it is hard to understand Mishima's horror regarding physical decay, and Schrader didn't even try.
I think, however, it is hard to understand Mishima's horror regarding physical decay, and Schrader didn't even try.
He must've tried a little bit because I came into this movie unfamiliar with Mishima's works and I totally got his horror regarding physical decay.
Also, please check out Krauthammer's comment on my Toerifc post this morning. It's pretty goddamn priceless.
I think what I mean Greg is not that you don't hear Mishima say he wanted to make a good-looking corpse, but that I just didn't get the feeling as much as I would have liked. Yes, "he" burns down the Golden Pavilion, preservation of the ideal through destruction, yet Mishima himself aged, decayed, tried to fight the idea of seppuku until he could attach it to an ideal that seemed timelessly beautiful. I didn't get that struggle in the film, only the ideals. Mishima himself didn't really emerge for me.
Marilyn, that's a very interesting perspective. Personally, I know very little about Mishima and so approached this film from a very different angle. I purposefully watched Mishima's own Patriotism before watching Schrader's biopic and found the short problematic in many ways, especially the overblown romanticization of suicide and the reduction of the woman's role to blind obeisance. Schrader I thought did a good job of exploring Mishima's artistic preoccupations more subtly and meaningfully than Mishima himself did in that rather simplistic short. I appreciated Mishima much more after Schrader's film, even though, as Krauthammer points out, the film also asks us to grapple with the author's flirting-with-fascist right-wing politics.
Greg - I keep getting a message about Apache when I click on your link. I can't see your site at all.
I think I'd seen MISHIMA twice before watching it again yesterday, and I wish I could remember what exactly drew me to it the first couple of times I saw it. This would have been many, many years ago, and I was less adventurous in my movie-watching back then, but something must have grabbed me, if I went ahead and watched it a second time. So yesterday was number three, and I frickin' loved it. What was interesting to me was that when I first saw it, I must have thought it was an extremely weird film, but if anything I thought the film was even stranger the third time around, because of its unique, and ingenious, structure, the relatively short screen-time given to Ogata (who's brilliant), the pure theatricality (literally - you can see the set dressing moving, and tracks on which the pieces are moving, which was obviously intentional).
Apart from the fact that the standard biopic structure is witheringly boring, I feel like one of the reasons Schrader constructed this film the way he did was because in some ways, despite how bizarre an individual Mishima was, he's also oddly uncomplicated, at least as an artist to be analyzed. Who he was deep-down is right there on the page, and in the way he lived his life. You don't have to do a lot of digging to find out about a guy who put himself on display to such a degree that his suicide was intentionally public.
And while I thought the artificiality of the adaptation scenes worked beautifully, I'm not sure why Schrader filmed them that way, other than to make them stand out from everything else. Mishima's fiction, at least the two boos I've read, aren't elaborate or flowery in any way -- the prose is relatively straightforward, with the characters' psychology providing the meat.
And I loved Glass's score.
Marilyn, I can see what you're saying and it's probably better in this case to come into the film somewhat ignorant of Mishima's works. In fact, ignorance of the central character in a biopic often helps in that regard. I can see Amadeus enraging a true scholar of Mozart (and have from an uncle who taught music) but on its own without knowledge of the subject it works much better.
Sometimes I think it's better to treat the subject of a biopic as a fictional character to judge the film more fairly on its own.
Marilyn, Apache is a server. Must be what your network is using. Sometimes servers have random problems with sites. Hopefully, yours with my site will not last.
There is a sense in this film that Mishima was perhaps the first, and the ultimate performance artist. I thought Kyoko's House elucidated the same kind of sexual hysteria that we see in In the Realm of the Senses, and shows how body artists provoke a sensual response through their self-mutilation. Mishima seems very self-loathing in this film, and that may be accurate. I never get a sense of hatred from his works, though. He believes in timeless ideals - his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, from which Runaway Horses comes, is a tale of reincarnation, of the same idea returning generation after generation.
Thanks for the kind words everyone!
Ed - The muted colors of the contemporary narrative reminded me of a 70s political thriller more than anything else, though I haven't seen any color Ozus unfortunately. I do know that Schrader is a huge fan of Ozu so that connection makes a lot of sense.
Greg - The relationship between his own death wish and the ideals he espouses is definitely one of the most interesting parts of the film for me. You can't write off his political views as merely being a result of his own troubles, but there is definitely a strong interconnection between the two.
Marilyn - I've never read any Mishima, but that's going to be fixed soon enough. It's interesting what you say about the feminine perspective because I remember specifically thinking that Mishima has a kind of worship of masculinity going on.
I agree with Greg that the fear of the body's decay came off quite well. It at least got a very visceral reaction from me.
Bill, I think there are two reasons for the theatricality of the fiction scenes. One is Mishima's apparent connection to Noh theatre, which utilizes similar stylized and minimalist sets. Mishima's own film Patriotism is set on a Noh stage and uses conceits like see-through walls and compartamentalized sets.
The other reason is more thematic: Mishima's life seems to have been dedicated to an ideal, to uniting art and action, to being able to bring his artistic ideals to practical reality. But in fact he was never able to do so, and the final chapter shows how anticlimactic and disappointing Mishima's glorious ideals turned out to be when subjected to the mundanity of reality. In his fiction, Mishima could present ritual suicide and sacrifice and rebellion as dramatic and romantic and grand, but reality is another matter. Schrader is, I think, subtly undercutting his protagonist, asserting that reality and art are in fact separate despite the connections between them. The art is a dream, an ideal, free of constrictions, while reality obeys its own rules. In the fourth chapter, reality takes over but when Mishima's real-life coup fails, he retreats to the artificiality of dreams and fictions, as Schrader cuts from Mishima's dying face to a montage of the romantic, beautiful images prompted by Mishima's fiction. Even if the life was a sad waste, the art remains glorious and profound and dazzling.
And while I thought the artificiality of the adaptation scenes worked beautifully, I'm not sure why Schrader filmed them that way, other than to make them stand out from everything else.
Bill, I think that's probably it. I mean, given that you're using different stories of Mishima to illustrate his life, if you filmed them exactly how his life was being filmed it would get downright confusing. Imagine if instead of flat color, black and white and theatricality all three themes were shot the same way. I admit, I'd probably be baffled.
And with that I need to go to class. See you guys in a bit.
Ed responded at the same time I did. I think everything Ed says is correct but still believe when one is telling a story using different thematic motifs the different visuals help keep those separate and unconfusing. So while I agree with Ed I think Schrader was also aware that using one style for fictional and non-fictional characters interacting might get confusing.
Maybe you're right to say that the subject of a biopic must be considered a fictional character. It's all just more grist for the creative mill, and that has stuck in my craw for a long time. That's why I avoided seeing Milk; it could only give me a hagiography, not a life, as The Times of Harvey Milk could. I think Schrader did a better job with this film that virtually any I have seen, and I think Schrader is drawn to stories of masculine identity. I often find his approach, even in his works for Scorsese, to be rather reductive and symbolic. I got in an argument with Rod on FonF about saying Taxi Driver has easy answers. In a way, this film tries not to have easy answers by relying on Mishima's own writing to convey his personality, but as Krauthammer says, in under 2 hours, you can't get that deeply under the skin of someone like Mishima.
"Mishima" is easily the most fascinating, and maybe the most informative, bio-pic I've ever seen. Rather than try to explain a man's entire life in two hours, Schrader wisely focuses on the most well-known-- and perhaps the most important-- event of Mishima's life, his death.
As others have stated, the structure of the film seems significant as the flashbacks of his life and pieces of his work bring us back to his death psychologically. And because of Mishima's own fascination (obsession?) with death, I think it's a fitting story-telling method.
It's a statement in itself that most of what we learn about Mishima is revealed through the segments connecting his life with his art. As noted by others above, there were several occasions of abrupt cuts from Mishima to a character in one of his stories, perhaps indicating that his mind and soul are best accessed through his art, not a recap of his career.
Rather than arguing that art imitates life or life imitates art, Schrader shows us that life and art are tangled together in a thorny mess, each unable to resist the influence of the other.
In his fiction, Mishima could present ritual suicide and sacrifice and rebellion as dramatic and romantic and grand, but reality is another matter. Schrader is, I think, subtly undercutting his protagonist, asserting that reality and art are in fact separate despite the connections between them...
Then shouldn't he have off-set the highly stylized suicide from RUNAWAY HORSES with a more visceral and realistic depiction of Mishima's own suicide?
As for Mishima leaning towards fascism...is that strictly true, or are we shown anything that supports that? Yes, he wants to raise up the Emperor, but it seems to me this is out of a desire to return to a traditional Japanese code of honor more than a return to a Japan of WWII (he claimed to have wanted to die in battle during that war, yet he faked an illness to get out of the military. He said he didn't know why he did that, and chalked it up to his own hidden cowardice, but could it have had something to do with his resistence to the way his country was waging that war, and the atrocities they were guilty of? I don't know, and maybe not, but it's worth considering, I think).
Besides that, look how he reacts to resistence to his goals, on the final day of his life. Did he ever even expect things to go differently? The film indicates that his suicide was planned well ahead of time ("We want to die with you"). In reality, I don't know if that's true, but in Schrader's film it appears that he never expected to succeed, and merely wanted to publicly wed his suicide with his beliefs, so that no one could misunderstand his motives.
I think Schrader is drawn to stories of masculine identity. I often find his approach, even in his works for Scorsese, to be rather reductive and symbolic. I got in an argument with Rod on FonF about saying Taxi Driver has easy answers...
One, yes, Schrader is absolutely drawn to - hell, obsessed - with stories of masculine identity. While I do find it tedious at times he's a hell of a lot better at it than John Milius who comes off as a poor man's Schrader who comes off as a modern day poor man's John Ford.
Who was saying Taxi Driver provided easy answers, you or Rod?
Any biopic is, by its nature, selective and reductive. It's unavoidable. If you could say everything there is to say about a person in two hours, it'd have to be a very boring person indeed. So I think Schrader makes a wise choice by approaching the film as more of an essay on certain themes in Mishima's life and work, rather than a straight he-did-this-then-he-did-that biography. In that respect, this film is more comparable to Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein or Caravaggio — stylized evocations of certain ideas about a person and his work — than to more traditional biopics like Milk, which is a good example of its much more conventional form, but still plagued by the usual biopic limitations. Schrader's film sidesteps the traps of the biopic with its stylization and abstraction. It's more about ideas than a man.
Besides that, look how he reacts to resistence to his goals, on the final day of his life. Did he ever even expect things to go differently? The film indicates that his suicide was planned well ahead of time ("We want to die with you"). In reality, I don't know if that's true, but in Schrader's film it appears that he never expected to succeed, and merely wanted to publicly wed his suicide with his beliefs, so that no one could misunderstand his motives.
According to Mishima's Wikipedia page, the suicide was planned for a year.
As for Mishima leaning towards fascism...is that strictly true, or are we shown anything that supports that?
I don't think so necessarily. In fact, I think Bill's whole comment is pretty dead on with my thinking here. I view, as I mentioned earlier, the whole suicide as Mishima's art and his beliefs have to do with the Bushido code, not fascism. The Samurai codes may seem rigid (they are) and militaristic (again, they are) but that's a whole different thing from fascism. Now, as for the Emperor, even that is different. One can believe in the value of a Monarchal system without believing in complete state control over the citizenry hence the rights of land-owners that existed in several monarchies in Europe well before the 20th century.
Ed - I agree. And though Mishima's life is certainly fascinating, his art is much moreso. I agree that Schrader did the right thing. It's more a personal problem I have with the film and expecting more than it could deliver.
Bill - I think his ideals skirt fascism, wanting a military presence in government. But his interests were in a restoration of the dynasty style of rule, a removal of Western influences.
Greg - I said Taxi Driver was easy in comparison to looking at a regular guy like Paul in Big Fan. Masculinity isn't psychotic, as it often seems to be in Schrader's depictions. Even Mishima looks a little psychotic for his fixations on suicide. But it wasn't suicide he wanted but seppuku, a ritual sacrifice. That's a lot different. He worshipped the godhead notion of emperor and wanted to be a sacrifice to this religious aspect. That is something I don't think Schrader really got.
Then shouldn't he have off-set the highly stylized suicide from RUNAWAY HORSES with a more visceral and realistic depiction of Mishima's own suicide?
At the moment of his death, in the film, Mishima retreats back into fiction, as represented by the montage of bright, gaudy images from his fictional works. That's how I read it anyway. In his novels, Mishima envisioned depictions of glorious death and destruction, fraught with meaning, while his actual death is preceded by great disappointment and embarassment. Only natural that he'd prefer the fictional version.
As for Mishima's fascist leanings... No, I don't think he was a fascist and I don't think he thought of himself as restoring a dictatorship or anything like that. Nevertheless, his nostalgic yearnings for a militaristic, authoritarian past do have fascist undercurrents. I think, for Mishima, yes, it was a matter of returning to a more "pure" time, to recovering a certain concept of honor that he thought was missing from the present. At the same time, the spectacle of him in dress uniform at the head of an army of similarly dressed followers has connotations that can't be avoided. He romanticizes the military and the authoritarian ruler in ways that dangerously flirt with fascism, even if that concept was the furthest thing from his actual desires.
Krauthammer (and friends) -
I am away from my computer this morning and afternoon, but just wanted to stop in to give support and say hi.
Hopefully I will be by tonight. All of you are awesome. Keep it up!
In his novels, Mishima envisioned depictions of glorious death and destruction, fraught with meaning, while his actual death is preceded by great disappointment and embarassment...
Not in the two I read. I don't know which Mishima novels you've read, but in THIRST FOR LOVE and THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA, the deaths are both murders, and rather nasty ones, at that.
But it wasn't suicide he wanted but seppuku, a ritual sacrifice. That's a lot different. He worshipped the godhead notion of emperor and wanted to be a sacrifice to this religious aspect. That is something I don't think Schrader really got.
I guess I don't get it either. I recognize that for Mishima, a "ritual sacrifice" was a very different thing from a suicide, but to these Western eyes they both look like a fixation on death. It's why Patriotism really rubbed me the wrong way, linking honor and death as though the ideal act is simply to die.
Not in the two I read. I don't know which Mishima novels you've read, but in THIRST FOR LOVE and THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA, the deaths are both murders, and rather nasty ones, at that.
I haven't actually read any Mishima novels; I was talking strictly about the film and the way Schrader represents the connection between Mishima's art and his life.
Off subject from themes for a moment I want to say I found Glass' score fantastic. My favorite aspect of the scoring and editing was that the modern day scenes of preparing for and driving to the final act before the military garrison had a specific beat and tempo that would always come back in exactly where it left off when the scenes were returned to, sometimes in the middle of the measure or a note.
Hi, everybody.
I read somewhere -- maybe it was his wiki page -- that Mishima loved the ideal of Emperor much more than the reality. He got on Hirohito's case, and the reason is revealing: it was for renouncing his divinity at the end of WWII. So, I kind of agree with Bill, Greg, et al., that Mishima in life may have been not so much interested in restoring the Emperor as restoring the ideals.
As far as Schrader's film supporting him in that, I think it is kind of dispassionate about him, that it takes a fairly dispassionate look at his life intertwined, as all but the most facile artists are, with his art. I was not engaged emotionally by this film, but did find it fascinating in it's structure and look and technically impeccable. And, indeed, several cuts above the standard biopics.
As far as his love-affair with the masculine, look at Marilyn's interesting comments about the "strangely feminine" nature of his work. This a facile observation -- dime-story psychology, really -- but he was known to visit gay bars, and his sexuality has been endlessly debated, and there is a concept known as "passing" or "compensation."
Oh, and Greg, like you I found the score superlative.
I've never heard of seppuku referred to as a form of (secular) religious sacrifice, and having just done a little bit of research on it, seppuku is defined as an "honorable suicide", preferable, for instance, to being captured by the enemy.
Ed - I think Western ideas of life at all costs often butt heads with Eastern notions. The idea of the kamikaze pilot is also a ritual sacrifice to the emperor, and one of the reasons Mishima hoped to die in battle. His cowardice, I think, is obvious - that he couldn't live up to his ideals at that point of his life and that he really wanted to live. His internal tug of war over art and life had to end in the squalor that was his own botched seppuku. In a way, that was fitting end for him.
I don't know how debatable his sexuality is, Rick. He wrote some very blatantly homosexual books (which Schrader wanted, but couldn't get, the rights to). There's an interesting BBC documentary included in the Criterion edition that goes into this, and his marriage -- as well as why he was married -- pretty thoroughly.
Marilyn, what about his seppuku counts as "botched"?
Bill - There are various definitions of seppuku that I am aware of. A suicide could be a sacrifice for peace. Mishima was very angry that the emperor had given up his claim to godhead.
The severing of his head did not go well. They had to bring in another second to do it.
He was homosexual. And when I talk about the feminine in his writing, I can honestly say that his "After the Banquet" is the most successful book written by a man from the POV of a woman. He was so in tune with the inner workings of women, it's frightening. That goes beyond dime store psychology. Perhaps he would have been a transsexual in a later time.
Do you think that was the entire motive behind his suicide? I don't even believe it was the primary motive, given his desire to die at the height of his beauty, before decay set in.
I think Western ideas of life at all costs often butt heads with Eastern notions.
That is true, especially in connection to ritualistic suicide, but not in battle so much. The idea of dying for one's country is as much a western as an eastern notion.
Mishima's sexuality comes to the fore especially in one of my favorite scenes from this film: the scene in Kyoko's House when the protagonist's girlfriend says she'll be his "mirror" (echoing a Velvet Underground line that Lou Reed wrote for Nico). She then holds up a mirror to obscure certain parts of the guy's face and body, replacing them with her own face and body. She asks him to see himself in her, to identify with her femininity. The shot when the mirror overlays her bare breast on his chest is especially powerful and perhaps lends some truth to Marilyn's "transsexual" comment. There's a suggestion that Mishima was wishing for a different, more feminine identity.
Marilyn, I didn't mean his feminine writings were "dime-store" psychology, but that my analysis of his hyper-masculinity as compensating is. I'm just a dime-store psychologist ... it makes a great country song.
And forgive me, but the source I read said that there was a debate about his sexuality. Apparently not.
Yeah, Ed, the transsexual comment makes a lot of sense. Another shot comes to mind, about his alter-ego talking about wearing tights, and holding his legs up to examine them.
Then he says, as if he's forgotten himself, that he wishes his body were more muscular (not exact words).
Rick - I understood you. No problem.
That is true, especially in connection to ritualistic suicide, but not in battle so much. The idea of dying for one's country is as much a western as an eastern notion.
I agree with Greg: there's a difference between the idea of killing oneself rather than being captured in battle, or as a martyr on a literal suicide mission — a popular idea in both the East and the West — and the more explicitly Eastern concept of ritual suicide for other reasons. Seppuku in non-battle contexts ties up honor and death in a way I find hard to understand from a Western perspective, especially with respect to Mishima, who seems to have glorified the very concept and went looking for an excuse to do it himself. It's one thing to commit suicide as a response to something in one's life, and something else altogether to hold up suicide as an ideal to work towards, to spend one's life essentially practicing for a glorious death. In this respect, there's something simultaneously sad and a little silly about Mishima.
Rick, I thought the legs in tights question was explicitly transsexual in nature. The way he holds his legs up is very feminine indeed and Scrader shoots it from a high angle to look more alluring so to speak.
Greg, you're absolutely right. Then there's -- I believe, it was late when I saw it -- a shot from "Kyoko's House" where his face merges with his lover's in a broken mirror ... the classic mirror/identity shot.
Transsexuals spend a lot of time before "giving in" over-compensating, growing beards, etc.
Ed's points about suicide mirror some of my own. Not believing in an afterlife or any form of reincarnation I view death as non-existence. As such, the person for whom the suicide means the most, the self-slain victim, cannot appreciate it to any degree at all because once he is dead, he's dead. Forever. There is no awareness or sentience of any kind.
And even if there were reincarnation the one being reincarnated doesn't know he killed himself previously so again the point is lost. And if there is a physical afterlife, like a heaven, is one to believe that once there you start tugging on people and saying, "Hey, look what I just did. Pretty cool huh?"
So the point of a ritualistic suicide requires mountains of faith that you are making a statement of stunning articulation that will be appreciated by the masses for all time. Since this can never probably be achieved I'd have to agree that Mishima's ideas about his own suicide were in the end, delusional.
Ed - I also find Mishima a somewhat sad and silly figure. The film shows him interested in success - how many translations of his works, for example - and engaged with the world. Yet, he kept striving for a kind of purity from commerce in his choice of objects for assassination. He seemed to want to root out what was Western in himself as much as in his country. And of course, his homosexuality was big taboo in Japan. I understand they censored the gay bar scene.
They censored it for a TV showing, cutting the bar scene out... and I understand that it was never released it theatrically.
Greg - It's really not fair to judge Mishima's beliefs by our own. His foolishness, I think, has more to do with his denial of his own attitudes than in any notions he had about seppuku.
Marilyn, I can only understand the world through how I see it and I'm simply saying that suicide, whether there be an afterlife or not, is pointless as a work of art. The second it is completed the artist has taken himself out of the equation.
Using the word fascist was most likely a mistake, I was actually a bit nervous about it because I don't really have any solid grounding in eastern political theory and felt odd applying western traditions to it. But it's a clearly militaristic honor bound society that he's aiming for.
As to western vs. eastern conceptions of honor suicide and such, I felt it was one of the films great strengths that I understood it in some strange way, I was able to follow the romance of it. Not that I'm going to off myself to save my honor anytime soon.
I don't see his seppuku as a work of art. It was a final act in affirmation of his adopted world view. It was the political versus the artistic. Mishima was not a political artist.
I think that Schrader was attracted to the story because of the politics involved. He shows something similar in his most recent directorial effort, The Walker. Woody Harrelson's homosexual lover makes photographs that look like those from Abu Ghraib. This political aspect and the torment of the body echo Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters in some ways, a connection I would not have made if I hadn't re-viewed the earlier film.
I don't see his seppuku as a work of art. It was a final act in affirmation of his adopted world view.
He made a film about this form of suicide. He took photos of himself mimicking St. Sebastian. I think Mishima absolutely considered death as an expression of art and as much states that throughout the film and at the end when narrating as he is flying in his plane, that the perfect culmination of life and art is death. So yes, I think the suicide is considered by Mishima to be an artistic expression.
I absolutely agree with Greg. His suicide was artistic before it was anything else. It was the harmony of pen and sword. That was the whole point.
And if there is a physical afterlife, like a heaven, is one to believe that once there you start tugging on people and saying, "Hey, look what I just did. Pretty cool huh?"...
Well, painters don't do that at gallery exhibits of their work, either. Or at least I hope they don't.
And if there is a physical afterlife, like a heaven, is one to believe that once there you start tugging on people and saying, "Hey, look what I just did. Pretty cool huh?"...
Well, painters don't do that at gallery exhibits of their work, either. Or at least I hope they don't.
Well no but they're around to see the reaction and engage in it. That's what I'm saying there. Of course, art is a form of communication and if the artist chooses to disengage immediately after starting the conversation, which one would have to with suicide, then he has to have faith that he expressed himself exactly as planned because there's no further discussion. Often an artist will revisit the same themes in an effort to get it right. Mishima can no longer do that after November 25, 1970.
How about that final facial expression as he stabs himself, the release of pain and anguish and emotion. Ken Ogata did such a great job with this.
Well, I guess you're right. I just see a lot more in it that just an artistic expression, and I think that's what Schrader simplifies.
Great thoughts here, everyone. Just checking in for now as Netflix was late shipping my copy to me so it should be coming in tonight. I'll watch it tonight and chime in with some comments then. Good choice, Krauthammer!
Where the hell did everybody go?
How about Schrader? Any more thoughts on him as a director? Is there any possible connection between this and other of his work? AutoFocus, Hardcore, American Gigolo?
I've always found his writing to far exceed his directing abilities. This is probably the best film he ever did as a director but I get the feelings from his other works that the visuals aren't as much a concern to him as the dialogue.
I'll admit, I haven't seen any of Schrader's other directorial features, but after seeing Mishima I find it surprising to hear that he's generally not concerned with visuals. Because Mishima is not only a visually stunning film but a film where the visuals are very much substantial and meaningful, where the image is used to convey thematic undercurrents in addition to the strong presence of words through the voiceover. So is this film really an anomaly in the career of a director generally uninterested in such formal/visual components?
Well I just don't get much visually from him and I've seen at least seven of his other films. All of them are shot well, don't get me wrong, but Blue Collar, American Gigolo, Hardcore & Light Sleeper all rely on character and dialogue much more than visual storytelling. Except for Mishima his works all have a very straightforward appearance to them, a workmanlike quality. And a lot of them are pretty damn good too, looking back on them in my mind now. I might have to see Blue Collar again soon as I remember it fondly.
I've heard some very good things about Affliction but that's about my previous experience when it comes to his directorial career. It really is a perfectly shot movie, it would be very strange indeed if none of his other work lives up to it.
A cursory overlooking of Bailey's filmography shows that he's mostly the DP on a bunch of romantic comedies right now, and his most high profile non-Schrader gigs were for stuff like Ordinary People and The Big Chill neither of which I remember having particularly outstanding photography.
Yeah, this film really does seem like an anomaly in Schrader's career as a director, albeit a great one. Like Greg, I've seen a fair number of Schrader's other directing efforts, and I've liked many of them (BLUE COLLAR is probably his second best -- it's been a really long time, so I could be wrong -- though for me HARDCORE could have been his masterpiece, had the ending not been so by-the-numbers) but visually nothing approaches MISHIMA. It's like a different director entirely. He might have tried to go this route with ADAM RESURRECTED, but he sort of...didn't. That film just whiffs into nothing, in my opinion, but it could have been so much more. Although, then again, maybe not: as a story, and a piece of surrealism, it felt, in its own way, to be kind of rote. I wonder if the source novel is similar, but the film hasn't inspired me to find out.
The Walker is a very visual film, in fact, the visuals save it from being a complete fiasco.
Krauthammer, thank you for your pick, I knew nothing of Mishima except what I read on wikipedia before watching and am now wanting to know much more.
I echo others in saying this was the best biopic I've seen. The structure kept the film moving, the visuals were stunning and the score was perfect. And I think I'm a little in love with Otaga now.
I do have a question about something that I didn't really understand from the film, why was Mishima a traditionalist and determined that Japan should go back to the Bushido way? I didn't think his house and garden appeared very traditional and I didn't really see him exhibiting the seven virtues. Mishima's belief that a person should die young at the peak of his beauty seems contradictory as well. It appeared to me that he was Bushido only in his loyalty to the concept of an Emperor.
Kassey - That's a very interesting point. I don't know enough about Japanese culture to comment with assurance, but I definitely think that that could be interpreted as Mishima cherrypicking which elements of bushido he wants to uphold. I'm not sure if his desire to die at the peak of beauty is part of bushido per se, it seems to be a personal thing he has developed that he has melded with bushido code.
I have also seen AFFLICTION, and its a gloomy, wintry piece that certainly supports the fact that Schraeder names Bresson, Ozu and Dreyer as major influences. The fatalistic elements in the plot may be Schraeder personified, but they are also the work of writer Russell Banks, who also penned the downbeat but magnificent THE SWEET HEREAFTER.
Hello Krauthammer!
What a great conversation! I don't have anything to add on Mishima, but I would suggest Schrader's Patty Hearst as a follow-up: it's as visually interesting as Mishima and there's a thematic resonance between the two movies.
Schrader as director remains one of my favorites working in American today. I think Affliction is a magnificent piece of filmmaking and wears its Dreyer influences on it sleeve. I think the one film of his I was really drawn to was Auto Focus. Some of that has to do with my love for biopics, but more than anything it shows a filmmaker who doesn't have to rely on his own scripts to make a damn good movie (I thought it was the best film of 2002).
There's no questioning the man's ability to pen a great piece of cinema, but even when he delves into experimental territory (Cat People and The Exorcist prequel to name a few) he more than shows his chops as a competent director who values visuals as much as words.
I apologize for the fact that I haven't been able to watch Mishima yet, but work and school are proving to be huge obstacles right now as the terms are winding down and I have tons of grading to do for work and tons of projects to turn in for grad school. My apologies.
I will post some thoughts to the film on the blog in mid December and link back to this fine comments section...I hope my membership card isn't revoked! Hehe.
Thanks for the great pick, Krauthammer. I look forward to watching it soon and sharing some thoughts in the future. Again sorry I couldn't contribute more to the conversation.
But I like this question about Schrader the direcotr. I've found that the one Scorsese film I've enjoyed the most in the past ten years was written by Schrader (Bringing Out the Dead) and the rest were just kind of 'meh'. But that film was full of energy and visceral visuals that seemed to go missing in Scorsese's 2000 efforts (although I like those films they just weren't as daring or interesting as Bringing Out the Dead was...a film that reminded me a lot of his 70's films, and I think Schrader had a lot to do with that).
I also think it's interesting that arguably Scorsese's best films were penned by Schrader. Anyone else agree?
This is somewhat off-topic, but I'm glad to see such appreciation for Bringing Out the Dead, which is too often written off and ignored. It really is a raw, passionate character study just like the other Schrader/Scorsese films, and I think it's fantastic, in equal parts because of writer and director. Scorsese is at his best when he's making scrappy, street-level "small" films like this, so Schrader's a good match for him.
But Scorsese's best films are written by Schrader? Nah: I'll grant you Taxi Driver, of course, but otherwise my personal list of Scorsese's best is filled out by stuff like After Hours, King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, etc. I do like Last Temptation a lot, too, as messy and nutty as it is.
And it has been argued, hehe. I love Raging Bull and Taxi Driver...and I actually think that Bringing Out the Dead is one of Scorsese's best films. I don't think Scorsese's success can exclusively be linked to Schrader's scripts, but I think it's interesting that his most talked about films were penned by Schrader.
I just think it's an arguable case. I still prefer films like The Age of Innocence, The King of Comedy, Casino, and Mean Streets to stuff like Last Temptation.
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