Thanks for the podcast guys.
I must admit I was struggling through this film a few weeks ago, so gave it a break halfway through. This afternoon I watched that old BBC docu about Mishima I mentioned in the original post and then picked up on the film. This time I found a better coherence in the second half, or maybe that was just me feeling more comfortable knowing who the man actually was.
He was a controversial figure in Japan it seems , so Schrader has taken a great way of portraying his life by incorporating his work into the film, otherwise maybe Mishima would just have come across as a great writer but a pretty nasty piece of work. The choice of Ken Ogata to play Mishima was a safe choice, he's such a great actor.
I liked the end scenes in the military office, the globe symbolically falling off the stand then resting behind him when he commits seppuku. He is in his head then, at the end, a samurai.
I'm glad I stuck with it cos it was interesting and the score was ace
![Smilie](/community/images/smilies/smile.gif)
Schrader did well at getting inside Mishima's head as at no point I was thinking this is a Western film take on a curious Japanese story, it felt Japanese.
Mishima's words here about sum him up:
Words are a deceit. In order to transform reality the writer must be deceitful but action is never deceitful. The harmony of pen and sword, the samurai model used to be a way of life now it's forgotten. Can art and action still be united?