Schrader, for what it’s worth, considers this film his best film as director
Philip Glass’s luminous score and John Bailey’s photography (especially some of the venetian blind lighting/shadow work) helps make the film a truly magnificent work— the neon lights through venetian blinds in bed sequence is stunning- schrader does some great venetian blind work (taken mainly from bertolucci’s the conformist) in american gigalo as well
Ebert says “the most unconventional biopic I’ve ever seen, and one of the best”
There are 4 chapters set up in the beginning telling you the titles of the 4 much like the chapter page in a book. This is uncommon. Each chapter is rigorously a half hour long but within each chapter you have 3 narrative strands, the black and white flashbacks, the normal older Mishima driving himself to suicide, and the gorgeously mounted stage/set bound neon-colored of his work (which clearly tells a story of mishima as well)
Wonderfully formally splintered
The film is a powerful statement (perhaps by Schrader himself that life can and will never be as perfect as art (or as it should be in Mishima’s head). Perhaps this, along with other factors, drove him to suicide. It would be an interesting comparison with Travis Bickle.
The final shot of mishima’s ritual suicide is a stunning zoom/tracking combination shot like that in vertigo and jaws
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