Masculinity: A Beautiful Self-Destruction.

In this modern age, we’ve found ourselves at a precipice, a perilous razor edge between two words. Man is being pulled apart, dissected, and re-examined. Their values are being challenged, and the world rejecting their old ideals. Necessary questions are being asked in an evolving landscape and it has left many in disarray. Paul Schrader knows this all too well and has known for decades and continues to hammer home his point of this male existential angst. Be it through Travis Bickle’s (Taxi Driver) loneliness or loss of faith of Toller (First Reformed) what does a man do when the society doesn’t reflect their ideals? Well, you have ‘’Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters’’ (1985) which crafts together a beautiful and bloody story of self-destruction in the search for meaning.

The film approaches Mishima’s life in a rather unorthodox manner. We watch his early life in black and white as he discovers different dimensions of the male body through his bisexuality, the seeds his mother and World War 2 Japan planted in him that shaped his right-wing politics and his gift for writing and subsequent success from it. What I find fascinating about it are the contradictions he develops. He wants war but is a coward, he wants connection but rejects it when given the choice, he embraces nationalism but seeks the approval of foreigners. Paul does well to craft a complicated figure whose narrative prose flows beautifully from the ink of his pen but endorses some rather regressive views.

 The 3 novels are depicted through beautiful theatre set designs with florid colouring. They are artificial but it’s in that presentation where Mishima explores ideas and engrains his beliefs in all its glory and contradictions. The resentment that comes when a man cannot attain the beauty they desire and the fallout that follows that. The ruinous sadomasochist relationship of a man who sold himself to a loan shark to pay his debts. The attempt of a man who is willing to overthrow the new political order of post-war Japan to reinstate the emperor. These stories play out Mishima’s ideal of a man who commits to an idea and lets it consume them to the point of death.  A narrow single-mindedness to control the world around them with death being the only acceptable alternative, a belief not too dissimilar to those on the radical right of today and yesteryear. It’s not clear as to whether it’s the stories that influenced his principles or vice versa but the fantasy was an ideal playground to voice them. The imaginary unfortunately foreshadowed what was to come in his reality.

The third section takes a naturalist approach with us seeing him for what he is on the 20th of November 1970 as he and his private attempt to seize control of a military base. The documentary style removes any artificiality and/or nostalgia for the event of the day. It is as matter of fact as one’s depiction of life can be on film. What we get is simply the culmination of Mishima’s musing and writings, a logical end result. A man with nothing but illusions of grandeur failing to pierce the hearts and minds of the average citizen. The film bookends the reality and fantasy of Mishima and helps paint his psyche in ways rarely seen in cinema, especially in the biography genre. A genre that, at its laziest, can easily just be a visualised Wikipedia article on the subject.

 It’s a unique approach to the biopic as it finds a way to through multiple forms of styles and surreality to paint a detailed mental image of a man struggling to find his place (and by extension Japan's) in a post-modernist world. A world that encourages diplomacy, democracy, trade, migration, and progress. Paul’s film is more than just an examination of the individual but of the state of man. That one needs to throw away the shackles of fictional and arbitrary expectations of masculinity and see the world through the lens of empathy or risk destroying yourself for absolutely nothing and be met by nothing but jeers at your death.