Product Details

• Actors: Ken Ogata
• Directors: Paul Schrader
• Format: Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Japanese, English
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: July 1, 2008
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0016AKSOG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,983 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (The Criterion Collection)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

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

Product Description

MISHIMA:LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

149 of 153 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars paul schrader reply, October 23, 2004

By 

Paul J. Schrader (ny, ny) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters (DVD)

Someone pointed out to me confusion about the change in the narration. Here's the story. I originally intended to have Mishima's narration in English outside Japan to cut down on the surfeit of subtitles. (The US version of Diary of a Country Priest has French dialogue and English narration.) I asked Roy Scheider to read a transdlation of the Ogata/Mishima narration and we mixed this into the film at Lucasfilm. The Japanese distributor was to be responsible for mixing Ken Ogata's narration into the Japanese version. However, there never was a Japanese version since the film was de facto banned in Japan. Consequently, it was never possible for non-English speaking Japanese viewers to see the film entirely in Japanese. When the DVD was issued we went back to Lucasfilm to fix this, allowing either a Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Ogata narration or a non-Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Scneider narration. In recording both Ogata and Scneider an equal effort was made to keep the narrative flat and matter-of-fact. Paul S.

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Unlikely Hollywood Film Ever, March 30, 2008

By 

Thomas Plotkin (West Hartford CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

This was a film financed by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola,distributed by a major Hollywood studio, that but for some narration by Roy Scheider is entirely in Japanese, and is told in a fragmentary narrative style which oscillates between wildly contrasting stylistic modes; the widow of the film's subject signed away life rights to her husband's story conditioned upon the film's not dealing with his none-too-secret homosexuality, which the film proceeded to deal with, albeit obliquely, and she then fought production in Japan tooth and nail. Mishima himself, Japan's most famous post-war novelist, attempted a paramilitary coup d'etat in 1970, in which his private army took over the Ministry of Defense, and committed a highly public hari-kiri. He was and is a subject of vast controversy in Japan, a consensus society, who since his death have preferred not to be reminded he existed. Given the artiness of the film, the foreigness of it's subject matter, and the Japanese blackout/ban, it is amazing "Mishima" got made at all.

Even without the sheer strangeness of the work and improbability of its existence, this is an awesome film. "Mishima" is one of the best movies about an artist ever made. Mishima sought to make his life into a work of art, and his bid for violent political action and self-martyrdom was his terminal masterpiece. "Mishima" intercuts documentary-style scenes of his final 12 hours with black and white flashbacks telling of his life up to that day, aping the style of classical Japanese cinema of Ozu and Naruse; but the third layer of narrative are highly stylized scenes from three of his novels (Temple of the Golden Pavillion, Runaway Horses, and Kyoko's House), shot on elaborate soundstages on blatantly artificial sets in garish 40's MGM-style color (each with its own individual color palette). All three narrative modes, and the violent climaxes of the three novels, fuse, "Intolerance"-style, in rapid montage as the film builds to its endpoint, as life and art meld.

The film shows us the life that fueled the artist's fictions, the fictions themselves and how they transformed the raw material of Mishima's life, and then how Mishima's dissatisfaction with mere art-making lead to a flamboyant attempt at transcendant, suicidal direct action. In the end,Mishima becomes one with his creations, and life becomes art. This film is the most successful representation of a writer's life I've ever seen, all thanks to Mishima the man's insane extremism.

Philip Glass' operatic score is extrarordinary (and I am a non-fan), as essential as Morricone's music is to Leone's films.

I have not yet mentioned the name of the man behind this masterpiece. Paul Schrader, author of a one of the best critical film essays ever ("Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer"), writer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Last Temptation of Christ, director of American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, Affliction, Patty Hearst and Cat People. While much of his work is fascinating, this is an out-and-out masterpiece. A truly brave film, as impossible as a Tarkovsky or a Bresson. And if any film deserves the Criterion treatment, this is it; in addition to commentary from the director, composer Glass and cinematographer John Bailey, it will be full of documentary material about the actual Mishima (the photogenic bodybuilder was a significant media star in both Japan and the West, he even acted in commercial films!) to provide needed context, and the beautiful sounds and images will surely benefit from the company's usual lush transfers. Check it out, you'll thank me.

71 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A biopic that is even more impressive than its subject, October 20, 1999

By 

TruthWillOut (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mishima [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Most biographical films of artists (Immortal Beloved, Amadeus, etc.), even if they are well made, hardly live up to the greatness of the people they describe. This film is a notable exception, one which outdoes its subject. Mishima was an accomplished writer, one whose works deserve to be read, but no single work of his stands out as an unquestionable masterpiece of world literature. This film, on the other hand, is without doubt one of the masterpieces of world cinema.

The film is broken down into interlocking "modules": those which depict Mishima's life and those which recreate episodes from his books. The literary recreations are done in a highly stylized manner which captures (and at times, outdoes) the mystery and poetry of the original texts. The biographical segments feature a fine sense of both drama and poetry. They capture the essence of Mishima's passion in a way that even he himself was unable to do.

The score by Philip Glass is one of the finest film scores ever written, and it turns the film almost into a kind of opera. It is far superior to any of his other compositions.

I was born a few years after Mishima committed suicide, but I am friends with two people who knew him personally, both of whom have excellent taste in both film and literature: they both recommend this film highly. The film may take some factual liberties, but it represents the fundamental nature of the man with infallible accuracy.

Whether your interest is great cinema, great literature, Japan, or Mishima himself, do yourself a favor: see this film.