Review of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters by Schrader

Since the release of the re-booted Robocop, which makes me want to "boot," I was thinking about how so many films from the 1980's are being "rebooted." Anyway I caught myself up in the 1980s with the film I watched tonight. I watched on my computer through Hulu.com. This is not a plug for Hulu. And I caught myself thinking about whether Mishima was the best film of the 1980s? Is it? I'd love some feedback. It certainly ranks up there. Definitely top ten. What else? Reds? The Last Emperor? Those are two of my favorites. I have watched them numerous times and still cannot fathom how I could make a film of comparable quality. Similar to Mishima. It was definitely Schrader at his peek. I don't think he has done better as a director since.

Everything about the film is great. The narrative quality, the cinematography, and the set design which is so unique. Acknowledgement must also be given to editing which brings the entire narrative together. Did I mention the writing? The Schrader's writing is beyond reproach. As an aspiring screenwriter I must say that Schrader serves as an excellent example of what to write. He has had some flops and some films that are not that great. Yet he has written hits like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Mishima. All great. And so difficult to mimic.

The film follows a circular pattern. It has a chronological stroy, but it frequently reverts back to the past. The film is semi-autobiographical as were many of his works. The flashbacks also follow a chronological order. First with his childhood all the way up to his Seppoku. The flashbacks portray one of his books at a time. The adaptation of scenes from his novels are exercises in formalist brilliance that are incomparable in film history. I suppose Von Trier's Dogville could serve as a comparison. Both portray the artifice of Cinema to an extreme. They accept the fact that what they are doing is a film and they manipulate mise en scene to construct scenes that are incredibly imaginative. I'm at a lost for further examples. Perhaps, just like I was when the images from Mishima flash across the screen like dreams from the subconscious. The Golden Pavillion, the art gallery, and the sword fighting scene all stick out in my memory as being visually superb.

 The construction of the story is also excellent. It builds and builds until the final climax of the self suicide, until the flashbacks catch up to the present. There are many scenes which were written in such a way to draw you in to the film, releasing you only for moments between the four parts. The stutterer at the Golden Pavilion, the bodybuilder, and finally the soldier. Each presents the evolution of Mishima which was quite opposite from what was happening around the World in the 1960s. Instead of being a radical leftist like so many students, Mishima became a radical rightist. Many people did not like Mishima. I find him to be like Hemingway. He is so manly. So traditional in a radical way. Similar to Hemingway both had infamous deaths and both cut a masculine figure.

It is to the credit of Schrader, and executive producers Coppola and Lucas that a film like Mishima can be made. Yet I don't know how well Mishima went over in Japan. I'm sure many didn't like the allusions to Mishima's homosexuality. And I'm sure just as many didn't think Mishima deserved a film about his life. I think this film should be appreciated for its artistic merit and not solely on the politics of it's subject.

Review of Senso by Visconti

I have recently been taking an Italian language class. It has reinvigorated my desire to watch Italian films. I searched for sometime for recent Italian films but didn't find any to my liking on Hulu.com. What I did find is what I'm going to write about, Senso by Luchino Visconti. This is an epic, historical film. It aspires to be something like Selznick's Gone With the Wind, but comes up short. It is more of a study of illicit love between an Italian Aristocrat and an Austrian Liutenant. The love affair is doomed from the start. The character of the Austrian soldier is executed at the end of the film. Thus, the Italian Lady gets her revenge on the unfaithful soldier.

What could have been a larger themed story about occupation and unification in Italy becomes a personal story about an Aristocratic Lady who can't refuse her forbidden lover. Time and again he mistreats her. Throughout the film I kept asking why does she go back to him? Just when you think she is over him she breaks down and takes him back. It is a tragic story of betrayal. Of being used by someone whom you know you shouldn't trust.

The climax of the story is when the Italian Aristocratic Lady makes a surprise visit to her Austrian lover. She finds him living a life of luxury and in bed with a prostitute. A fight ensues. She leaves, then turns him for faking his sickness. At the end he is executed for desertion.

The story presents the Austrian soldiers as brutes. There is no sympathy left for the soldier. He seduces the rich woman, uses her for her money, then totally alienates her. I liked the staging of the war scenes. The conflict between the Lady and the soldier intensifies as the war between Italy and Austria intensifies. For an Italian production that doesn't have the big budgets of Hollywood, the staging was grand. It shows soldiers fighting, calvary charging, canons being fired, and Generals giving orders. It really gives a dramatic depiction of Italy's quest for unification.

It is these scenes and rising intensity that cause me to compare it to Gone With the Wind. Both are set during conflict and both depict lovers who are not meant for each other. I also derive another comparison within the history of Italian Cinema. If Visconti is Aristocratic and Romantic, then I suppose his opposite is De Sica who portrayed extremely personal stories of very ordinary people. I haven't studied much of Visconti except from Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy, but De Sica and Visconti are opposites, yet both in the era of Neo-realism.