Critic Reviews
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100
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The most unconventional biopic I've ever seen, and one of the best.
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100
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The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin
Calling Schrader's masterpiece a mere biopic doesn't do it justice. It's more a dreamy, hypnotic meditation on the tragic intersection of Mishima's oeuvre and existence that takes place as much in its subject's fevered imagination as the outside world.
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100
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Time Out Tom Huddleston
Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.
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90
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Village Voice Nick Pinkerton
A sumptuous austerity, paralleling Mishima’s disciplined decadence.
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80
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The Guardian Peter Bradshaw
An ambitious, respectful account of the life and work of Yukio Mishima, the prolific Japanese author who made a romantic cult of Japan's lost world of martial glory and spartan warrior-manhood.
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80
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Los Angeles Times Sheila Benson
A beautiful, deadly serious attempt by Paul and Leonard Schrader to illuminate the life--and death--of one of Japan's most highly visible and self-propelling enigmas.
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75
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TV Guide Magazine
Mishima's most stunning aspect is the visual style employed in the dramatizations of the novels. With colorful, theatrical sets by famed Japanese designer Eiko Ishioka, the sequences are quite unique and impressive in their own right, and the entire film is photographed beautifully by John Bailey.
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60
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Variety Peter Debruge
Beautiful, yet flawed film.
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60
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The Telegraph David Gritten
There’s a coldness in Schrader’s calculations, and disturbingly he seems to swallow the entire myth of Mishima, an extreme right-wing nutjob who wanted to return Japan to samurai values. Philip Glass’s score, however, still takes the breath away.
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50
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The New York Times Vincent Canby
Here is an American film, in Japanese with English subtitles, written, directed and photographed by Americans, made in Japan with a Japanese cast, which attempts to reveal the spiritual mysteries of a quintessentially Japanese phenomenon. That it doesn't succeed is almost a foregone conclusion. What is surprising, however, is that Mishima is as tolerable as it is, given all the strikes against it.
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