Schrader’s unique approach to the life and death of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima is to defy all the tired conventions of the biopic and instead engage the complexities of the film’s subject through that which was most important to him: his art. Balancing stylized re-enactments of autobiographical sequences from Mishima’s novels and black-and-white flashbacks of his life, all of which are framed with jittery scenes from the day Mishima committed public seppuku as either his final political statement or his final artwork (or both), Mishima is a challenging and thought-provoking masterpiece, aided to no small end by Ken Otaga’s charismatic performance, Philip Glass’s hauntingly operatic score, and John Bailey’s mesmerizing cinematography. Easily one of the strangest and most compelling American films of the 1980s. (DVD)