BUY TICKETS HERE
Join us at 1 p.m. Sunday, November 17 for a screening of “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), director Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima. The movie, co-produced by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society.
MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS | 1985| DIRECTOR: Paul Schrader | WITH: Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami | RUNNING TIME: 2H | IN JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | RATED R for nudity, sexual content, violence and strong adult themes | PROJECTED IN 4K DCP
Taking place on the last day of Mishima’s life, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s past as well as gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.
“Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985) is the most unconventional biopic I’ve ever seen, and one of the best. In a triumph of concise writing and construction, it considers three crucial aspects of the life of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925-1970). In black and white, we see formative scenes from his earlier years. In brilliant colors we see events from three of his most famous novels. And in realistic color we see the last day of his life.
“As unorthodox as Schrader’s approach to Mishima’s life may be, I cannot imagine a better one. Like Hemingway and Mailer, Mishima conceived his life and his work as intimately related through his libido. In Mishima’s case this process was made more complex by his bisexuality and masochism, and his “private army” combined ritual with buried sexuality; his soldiers were young, handsome and willing to die for him, and they wore uniforms as fetishistic as the Nazis.
“Mishima is his ultimate man in a room. There is the young boy, separated from his mother and held almost captive by a possessive grandmother, who won’t let him go out to play but wants him always at her side. There is the writer, returning to his desk every day at midnight to write his books and plays in monkish isolation. There is the public man, uniformed, advocating the Bushido Code, acting the role of military commander of his own army.
“On the last day of his life, he is ceremoniously dressed by a follower and adheres to a rigid timetable that leads to his meticulously planned and rehearsed suicide, or seppuku. Considering that he is a man fully committed to plunging a sword into his own guts, he seems remarkably serene; his life, his work, his obsession have finally become synchronous.” — Roger Ebert
Tickets are $5 and available at link above. Students use code UMSTUDENT at checkout (Cane cards will be checked at the door).
