FESTIVALS:
1985 Cannes, Toronto
2018 (restored) Il Cinema Ritrovato (Italy)
Paul Schrader’s lifelong cinematic search for God’s loneliest man reached its apogee with this 1985 examination of Japanese author and eccentric Yukio Mishima. Part straight biopic, part stylised interpretation of Mishima’s headspace, the film is a breathless plunge into the creative soul that was unparalleled until Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. Mishima was a fairly unsavoury character: unbearably self-important, obsessed with surface beauty and eager to turn back the clock on Japan’s modernisation. But in Schrader’s hands he becomes likeable, even laudable, possessed of a dry wit, a grandiose sense of personal honour and a restless dedication to his art. And it’s how Schrader depicts this art that provides the film’s most astonishing moments, recreating key scenes from Mishima’s novels on stunningly designed, luridly textured soundstages and exploring the parallels between personal and artistic development. Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.
– Tom Huddleston, Time Out.
Destined to be as controversial as was the subject himself, Paul Schrader’s film Mishima is a boldly conceived, intelligent and consistently absorbing study of the Japanese writer and political iconoclast’s life, work and death. Seductively designed picture has serious limitations, to be sure, but combination of sensationalistic material and unusual esthetics should make this a hot item on the international art film circuit.
The most famous of contemporary Japanese novelists to Westerners, Yukio Mishima was also a film actor and director and leader of a militant right-wing cult bent upon restoring the glory of the emperor. He became forever notorious in 1970 when, accompanied by a few followers, he entered a military garrison in Tokyo, “captured” a general, delivered an impassioned speech to an assembly and then committed seppuku, or ritual suicide.
Although married and the father of children, Mishima was also a homosexual, and it has been over the depiction of this and other matters that the filmmakers and Mishima’s widow have jousted over the past couple of years.
Instead of pretending to deliver a fully factual, detailed biopic, director Paul Schrader, his co-screenwriter and brother Leonard and other collaborators have opted to combine relatively realistic treatment of some aspects of Mishima’s life, particularly his final day, with highly stylized renditions of assorted semi-autobiographical literary works in an effort to convey key points about the man’s personality and credos.
Approach is forthrightly intellectual, and works surprisingly well overall. Technique admits its own restrictions going in, and although the points being made about Mishima are sometimes belabored at unnecessary length, they are appropriate and judiciously drawn from his own writings.
Opening sequence, which shows Mishima waking up on the last day of his life; grooming himself, laying out his military uniform and sealing a just-finished manuscript for delivery to his publisher, is a superior piece of work and instantly draws the viewer into both the story and the film’s precise artfulness.
Final-day material, which reappears throughout the picture, is shot in an urgent, contemporary style, which contrasts significantly with scenes depicting Mishima’s childhood, which are lensed in studied black-and-white and often from the tatami, or near-floor level, a position favored by Yasujiro Ozu, the late Japanese director about whom Paul Schrader has written extensively.
These two styles then are joined by a third, one of swooping crane shots and extreme angles accomplished within deliberately artificial, New Wave-ish sets designed by Elko lshioka. These episodes, drawn from three Mishima novels and all featuring Mishima-like characters at different stages of development, artistically resemble nothing so much as Eric Rohmer’s hermetically studio-bound Perceval, and explicitly convey the author’s attitudes toward beauty, suicide, art, role-playing, sexuality and politics.
Homosexual overtones are underplayed carefully but clear nevertheless. One of the strongest portrayals in the film is that of Toshiyuki Nagashima as the Mishima figure in the adaptation of the militaristic Runaway Horses, but a major failing is pic’s inability to fully articulate Mishima’s political views.
On the other hand, a major plus is that Schrader, whose work until now has been perhaps unduly bound up with his own religious, sexual and violence-oriented hang-ups, has applied himself rigorously to his material here and excluded personal irrelevancies. Also, those fearing the director’s frequent taste for explicit gore would result in a climactic bloodbath in “Mishima” are in for a pleasant surprise, as the gruesome suicide is handled with relative restraint.
Pacing sometimes lags, particularly in the fictional interludes, and uninitiated audiences may be confused at times. Production itself, however, is stunning, and performances, led by that of Ken Ogata as the adult Mishima, are authoritative and convincing.
John Bailey’s cinematography is very strong in all three styles, while Philip Glass’ hyperactive score ultimately proves extremely effective even as it sometimes threatens to go over the top.
– Todd McCarthy, Variety, 15 May 1985.
RESTORATION
Supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and director of photography John Bailey, this new 4K digital transfer was created on a Lasergraphics Director film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative at Roundabout Entertainment in Burbank, California, and restored by American Zoetrope. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed using Diamant-Film Restoration and MTI Film’s DRS, while Digital Vision’s Phoenix was used for jitter, flicker, small dirt, grain, and noise management. The 2.0 surround soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm magnetic print master. Clicks, thumps, hiss, hum, and crackle were manually removed using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX. The entire film also has vastly superior color palette and as a result the surrealist footage is striking. The black-and-white footage also has a convincing organic appearance. There are absolutely no traces of problematic digital corrections. Image stability is excellent. Lastly, all age-related imperfections have been thoroughly removed. Outstanding presentation.
– adapted from Dr Svet Atanasov, Blu-ray.com, 31 May 2018.