Movies - Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

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	Movies - Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an episodic, stylized 1985 film directed by Paul Schrader and written by Schrader with his brother Leonard. It is based on the life and fiction of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.

The film features original music by Philip Glass. Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima and Roy Scheider speaks an off-screen English narration, also as Mishima. The film was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola (while he was involved with Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha
) and George Lucas.

The four chapters are "Beauty", "Art", "Action" and "Fusion of Pen and Sword". Each chapter features scenes from Mishima's life shot in lustrous black and white, intercut with highly stylised, theatrical scenes from three different Mishima novels and the realistically-shot story of Mishima's last day and seppuku. The Mishima novels used in the film are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) in "Beauty"; Kyoko's House (1959) in "Art"; and Runaway Horses (1968) in "Action". In the final chapter, the protagonists of all three novels are shown achieving their destructive and/or suicidal ends as Mishima stabs himself.

Schrader has said that he considers Mishima the best film he has directed: "It's the one I'd stand by - as a screenwriter it's Taxi Driver
, but as a director it's Mishima."

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