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Amazon.com:
With Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader constructs a puzzle-box portrait of the controversial author (1925-1970) who turned his life into a work of art. Presented by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, Schrader outdoes his benefactors in sheer audacity alone. In the opening sequence, which weaves throughout the film, Yukio Mishima (riveting Shohei Imamura regular Ken Ogata) prepares for death as the director cuts to pivotal moments from his past. Shot by American Gigolo's John Bailey and designed by The Cell's Eiko Ishioka, stately black and white footage alternates with eye-popping color sequences. With an assist from Leonard and Chieko Schrader, his brother and sister-in-law, the filmmaker blends Mishima's fiction into his biography, and splits the whole four ways: beauty, art, action, and harmony of pen and sword (the brothers also wrote Sydney Pollack's Japanese thriller The Yakuza). Encouraged by his controlling grandmother, Mishima becomes a conflicted figure, torn between mind and body, pain and pleasure--men and women. As he states, 'All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence.' (This collector's edition includes separate voice-over tracks by Ogata and Roy Scheider.)
The first disc houses a gorgeous transfer of the film, the theatrical trailer, and comprehensive commentary from Schrader and producer Alan Poul; the second offers a making-of featurette (with Bailey, Ishioka, and composer Philip Glass), audio and video interviews (including translator and biographer John Nathan), a 1966 chat with Mishima for French TV, and a 1985 John Hurt-narrated documentary for the BBC. Unlike Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, which found favor in the East, Paul Schrader's risk-filled endeavor resulted in a ban in his subject’s home country--and the director's crowning achievement. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Simply Put: An Amazing Movie
Paul Schrader has crafted a unique movie viewing experience. Using a combination of styles, he renders a psychological biography of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic personalities in the history of Japan. Schrader goes directly to the source and acts out Mishima's own words in the form of narration and enacting scenes from Mishima's novels. Adding to this, he acts out Mishima's final day when Mishma committed seppuku as a political protest. He also makes heavy use of flashbacks to tell ... Read More
Rating:  - An artistic biography
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a work of art. Depicting the life of Yukio Mishima, a controversial Japanese writer, who was considered for the Nobel Prize, this film delivers.
The film depicts the last hours of Mishima's life with flashbacks of his earlier days.
While the film is an American production, it is in the Japanese language. The film was too controversial to be released on home ... Read More
Rating: - Elegance & Brutality
Finally Criterion has gotten around to including one of my all time favorite films, Mishima. Directed by Paul Schrader and with beautiful set pieces by Ishioka Eiko, this is a truly great bio pic which Criterion has generoursly upgraded. This is the only bio pic I can think of that's based on a major modern Japanese author. It would be interesting to see other directors make films about Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Kafu. In Mishima you see his final day before committing seppuku as just another day and filmed ... Read More
Rating: - Mishima: life and fiction
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is visually stunning and features a soundtrack by Phillip Glass. It's about the life of writer Yukio Mishima, and the film alternates between his last day - when he and his private army(!) of ultra-nationalists tried to take control of the japanese army and reinstall the emperor as ruler of Japan - earlier episodes (as a boy, teenager and so on), and filmed scenes from his novels. All in all, we get some insights of Mishimas way to self-realisation, as a writer and warrior, ... Read More
Rating: - Extraordinary does not even begin to describe how great Schrader's film is....
If someone said "I'm going to pitch a film about Yukio Mishima, a writer well known in Japan but only known to intellectuals here in America, to a Hollywood studio, get Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to help me get it made, make it entirely in Japanese (except for some narration), and make it about the inner workings of the artist, not a straighforward biography", most would say that that person should be committed. Well, that's pretty much what Paul Schrader did, and he succeeded wildly beyond all ... Read More
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