Never afraid to press the audience’s buttons, writer/director Paul Schrader took on his most controversial topic in this visually enthralling and thought-provoking study of novelist Yukio Mishima. More or less banned for 40 years in the author’s native country of Japan, the film blends both the reality of Mishima’s life as an author and ultra-nationalist revolutionary with elements and re-creations from his novels. Rarely have visual beauty and moral ugliness been juxtaposed to such great effect as Schrader explores why the seeming contradictions of the novelist were always part of a unified whole. – Richard Whittaker
