Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Criterion Collection
by Paul Schrader
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ken OgataDirector: Paul Schrader
Brand: IMAGE ENT.
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Japanese (Original Language); English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-07-01
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion Collection
Product features:
- Paul Schrader's visually stunning, structurally audacious collage-like portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yuko Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku (ritual suicide), the film i
Movie Reviews of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Misima
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently bought and watched the Criterion Collection edition of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters directed by Paul Schrader. You may remember Schrader as the screenplay writer of Taxi Driver and director of American Gigolo and Cat People. This package has a new, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director's cut with new audio commentary from Schrader and producer Alan Poul. The second disk has video interviews with cinematographer John Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mataichiro Yamamoto, composer Phillip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka. In addition, new video interviews with Mishima biographer John Nathan and friend Donald Richie. Other features include: an audio interview with Chieko Schrader, a video interview featuring Mishima talking about writing, and The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 55 minute BBC documentary. There's a booklet that has a new essay by critic Kevin Jackson, a piece on the film's censorship in Japan and photographs of Ishioka's sets-which are pretty spectacular. It is a fascinating story of how the production got made and the struggles they had to make the film in Japanese with an almost all Japanese crew and American director. And the film is a triumph and the score by Glass has become a sort of classic and some of it was used in The Truman Show as well. The film is a complex intermingling of Mishima's biography, his last day where he committed seppuku, and adaptations of his fiction: The Golden Pavilion, Runaway Horses, and Kyoko's House (which has yet to be translated into English). Add to this: sublime production values, impressive cinematography, evocative acting, and a memorable musical score and you have an art house classic.
Summary of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Criterion Collection
Paul Schrader's visually stunning, structurally audacious collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku (ritual suicide), the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer's life 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 sincere tribute to its subject, and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.Special Features
- DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director's cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey
- Optional English and Japanese voice-over narrations, the former by Roy Scheider, the latter by Ken Ogata
- New audio commentary featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul
- The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 55-minute BBC documentary about the author
- New interviews with Donald Richie and John Nathan, collaborators and friends of Yukio Mishima
- New interviews with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka
- A new audio interview with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader
- A video interview excerpt featuring Mishima talking about writing
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Kevin Jackson and a piece on the film s censorship in Japan
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
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