Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Paul Schrader Run Time: 121 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1985
Starring: Go Riju, Hiroshi Mikami, Junkichi Orimoto, Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya
Our December Volunteer of the Month is Sydney Torrence, who has chosen Paul Schrader’s visually stunning biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters as her VOTM pick.
The film weaves together three distinct narrative threads: a dramatized account of Yukio Mishima’s final day leading up to his shocking ritual suicide in 1970, flashbacks to key moments in his personal life, and stylized adaptations of his literary works. Through these interwoven segments, Schrader delves into Mishima’s internal struggles with identity, beauty, nationalism, and the tension between art and action.
Though controversial for its subject matter, Mishima has been lauded as a masterful meditation on the interplay between creativity and self-destruction.