The life of writer Yukio Mishima, depicted through four chapters from his books serving as dazzling vignettes of his genesis, success and downfall.
A writer is a dangerous person, armed with a volatile combination of ink and perspicaciousness, they are able to describe the indescribable. They see the unseeable, and often times it’ll leave their view of the world completely changed – for better or for ill. Life is full of hostile contradictions and paradoxes which can’t seem to resolve themselves. Getting locked into one of these is tricky business, because once you traverse one side of the dilemma, you end up in uncharted territory which questions your views and beliefs, only for you to end up exactly where you started and nothing new gained. Was it worth the time? Can we really disentangle ourselves from this web of contradictions the universe is endlessly spinning for us?
The mind of writer Yukio Mishima was locked in a struggle with these universal antimonies, mismatches of logic only his eye could spot. The story of his growth as a person and writer, leading all the way up to his hopeless death, is magnificently told in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). The four chapters of his life; Beauty, Art, Action, and the Harmony of Pen and Sword, chart out the forging of his literary voice, how he found that voice to be useless in a world that cares not at all for words, how his discontent for the way things are came to be and what he decided to do about it. This non-linear poetic retelling of his life unfolds in such a brilliant and satisfying way, all the pieces falling into place with each chapter, providing more motivations for us to understand his actions as they’re happening on the last day of his life, while the film throws us back and forth within his interesting life and the life his characters lived in some of his literature which draw fascinating links to the writer himself. What I’ll get to rambling about in a moment is how beguiling and near-transcendental the striking visual beauty of this film is, but I thought I’d give you a fair warning beforehand because there’s so much of it.
Alright, I gave you an advanced warning, this is the point where you can either leave and do something better with your time, and if reading a raving lunatic babbling on the visual splendour of this film is the best use of your time right now then that must say more about you than me. At any rate, here it is.
This film is a journey for the eyes. It served me supreme beauty in regular doses at regular intervals through the film. Though the parts of the film depicting Mishima’s life were rather nicely shot, with some instances of great framing and camera positioning, where the film really bombarded me with ocular ecstasy were the dramatizations of segments from his books. Each chapter of his life plays with a different book; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Beauty, Kyoko’s House in Art and Runaway Horses in Action. Each with a uniquely distinct colour palette and art direction, these sequences capture the natural eroticism of his writing, words so goddamn turgid and dense with poetic metaphors that bind life, death, beauty and all the rottenness that lay beneath it under one glowing halo. Dominated by rich golden, yellows and greens, Beauty subjects us to the same weakness and powerlessness in the face of insurmountable beauty that dominates nature. The erotic pinks and purples of Art, are like electric blood pouring out of the wounds that creating art leaves on your body and soul – wounds that come with orgasmic pain. The greys and whites of Action speak a general dissatisfaction with the world, a loss of soul and nature and the restless desire to do something about it. All of these reflect Mishima’s actual views as he finds himself stuck in a world that refuses to change. What puts these dramatizations apart is the set design. Like a play or reading a book, these episodes are floating in an endless void of black, walled off in the memories of the writer and the imagination of the reader, tinged with intense colours of realisations. These episodes unfold separate from space and time itself, and separate from the narrative diegesis of the film, which assisted me, at least, in differentiating the characters appearing in these stories from Mishima himself. But that same zeal for change, that same inquisitiveness and revelatory glint is in the eyes of all the characters here as with Mishima himself.
What the film shows us are some of the defining moments of his life, the very instant when his beliefs materialised into the void of his mind and turned into emotions which subsequently became actions. To go along with it, Philip Glass’ tremendous orchestral score gives these moments a profound significance, not just personally for him but for us too, they made me appreciate everything that went right and wrong for him.
With his loathing of capitalism in Japan, spurred on by his extremist traditional views on masculinity, nationalism and militarism, Mishima and four of his loyal cadets from his private army, took the general hostage and attempted to give a speech to rouse the indignation of the soldiers. What then follows, in the final moments of the film is like the culmination of a long-form Pink Floyd song, when all the different instrumental segments come careening into each other reaching one final cutting chord. Over the course of his life, Mishima has been in a death grapple with what is mightier between the pen and the sword. Never before have I seen this paradox put into such motion before. One opens up your mind while the other opens up your body. One cuts off old ideas and replaces them with new, while the other cuts off limbs and replaces them with nothing. Though many people will probably side with the sword, you can use a pen for a hell of a lot of other stuff apart from writing.
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