Creating a successful biopic about a writer may be the most challenging task a film maker can undertake. For most viewers, movies are about action and most writers have limited action of the conventional sort going on in their lives.In "Mishima", though, the challenge of creating a movie that blends literary subtlety with real action is met head on. The relationship between writing and action -- between art and life -- was Mishima's central preoccupation, and this preoccupation provides the structure for the film itself. And a wondrous structure it is....In "Mishima" we see scenes from the author's final hours before his suicide adroitly interwoven with dramatizations from some of his key fictional works. Given the bizarre death that Mishima staged for himself, some viewers may find it hard to tell "fiction" apart from "reality." Integral to the success of this enterprise is the production design provided by the justly celebrated Eiko Ishioka. The stark economy and determined artificiality of Eiko's set designs adds enormously to one's experience of this movie. Phillip Glass's music is also a major contributor.When you put together the intricate mix of art and life, the amazing set designs, the excellent acting and the music by Glass you have a film of very rare quality. This movie is, in fact, as unique as its subject... and it seems a miracle that it was even made at all.My one criticism of the film is the choice of narrator. In the original version of the movie that I watched, the narration was done by Roy Scheider, and I find his manner of reading the narration text to be quite awful. It's hard to say why, exactly, I feel this way, but Scheider's voice here is like nails on a blackboard to me. Apparently later versions/releases of the film use a different narrator and if you can get one of those other versions I would highly recommend doing that.All in all, this is a movie to savor as carefully as Mishima's novels and plays. Highly recommended!

A fictionalized account in four segments of the life of Japan's celebrated twentieth-century author Yukio Mishima. Three of the segments parallel events in Mishima's life with his novels.This is a great film. I confess I really never heard of Yukio Mishima, and probably never read a single thing he wrote. But here he is brought to life and tells a story larger than life itself. Is it completely historically accurate? You know, probably not. But the details are not so much important here as the art itself.What is perhaps most strange is who brought this tale to life: Paul Schrader. Brilliant, artistic, but not the first name you would expect when it comes to Japanese history and literature...

Oh, how the critics fell all over themselves to praise their goldenboy Paul Schrader (author of Taxi Driver) when this movie came out. I never saw the qualities they were detecting when I watched this movie back in the day, so I re-viewed it, to see if I got it wrong. Mishima is extremely uninteresting. This is a chilly, unremarkable movie about an author living/working in a chilly abstruse culture. The flat reenactments don't hold your attention because they are emotionally adrift and stagy. And the rest of it just sits there being awful... with soldiers singing songs about the masculinity they pledge themselves to, hairsplitting about purity, the admiration of swords, etc.It must be a triumph when you learn you've landed Philip Glass; but then you have to get something out of him. Glasses score offers not a whit of distinction from his other work, nor does it provide the film any perceptible value. In 2010 it should be clear to anyone that Schrader squandered his career on work of no impact or importance (Cat People, AutoFocus, Light Sleeper, Patty Hearst, American Gigolo). He can bore you to pieces, and kill the momentum of a movie, quicker than anyone else. Schrader has made a resume full of lousy, amateurish films.

Mishima - a life in four chapters is in my opinion the best Paul Schrader film to this day. Mesmerizing cinematography, accompanied with Philip Glass mystical musical score added a completely magical aura to the story of one of Japan's greatest novelists, whose originality and picturesque narrative are beautifully portrayed in this film. As any gifted character, Mishima was troubled with severe self conflicts, the main of them being conflict between a "pen and a sword" as the director puts it in his final chapter, or the struggle between the sensitive poet with homosexual feelings, living in a notoriously masculine society with centuries long warrior traditions, thus widening the gap between the sensitive and the militantly traditional side of Mishima himself.All Schrader's films (and the ones he wrote scripts for) are basically stories of inside conflict within a man that doesn't belong in an environment he lives in. That also goes for Mishima, who, apart from Japanese military school upbringing is brought up with love for theater and words. His demise consisted of both of these key points in his life, it was about words and theatrical ending in a life long play. Film like this comes along once in a long while, and most will have to wait a lifetime to reach this beauty. 20 out of 10!!