Reimagined in vibrant, expressionist colour, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters marries an author to his fiction—a vivid middle where man and myth collide.

Yukio Mishima (Ken Ogata) is considered to be one of Japan’s most important novelists, and via Paul and Leonard Schrader’s unique framing, is psychoanalytically deconstructed to show not only how strong a storyteller he was, but how successfully a biography of this scope can capture the essence of personhood.

Beginning on the last day of Mishima’s life as he brazenly tries to reinstate the Emperor of Japan, Schrader’s film weaves in and out of reality, trying to connect the dots of the author’s past, his novels and the ultimately-fatal acts of the supposed present.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is preceded by Yukio Mishima’s own poetically violent exploration into love, honour and death, Patriotism.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters | Dir Paul Schrader | 1985 | 120 min

Patriotism | Dir Yukio Mishima | 1966 | 28 min