Last year, AFS founding member and artistic director, Richard Linklater, curated a series called Jewels in the Wasteland, in which he screened and discussed some of the best films made between 1980 and 1983.
This year, the series picked up where it left off, focusing on films made between 1984 and 1986. Some of the films included David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Robert Bresson’s L’argent, Alex Cox’ Sid and Nancy, to name a few.
Jewels in the Wasteland II wrapped up last Wednesday with Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, directed by Hollywood outsider and maverick, Paul Schrader.
“He’s a real hero. He’s hyper-intelligent and he’s rigorous. The biopic is such a difficult genre and he does such an inventive, wonderful job,” said Linklater of Paul Schrader.
Mishima is a film that should have never been made, according to Linklater. Schrader, who has notoriously made some of the most challenging films in cinema, had a hard time getting financed in general, even more so for a film about a Japanese author who wrote about sexuality, death, and political change. Mishima was also a radical right-winger and is remembered for committing ritual suicide. It’s clear that without the help of fellow directors Francis Ford Coppola, and especially George Lucas, the film would have never seen the light of day.
Lucas felt he got the short end of the stick from Warner Brothers Studios when they screwed up the distribution of his film THX 1138. Lucas, who was constantly badmouthing the studio was eventually asked by Warner Bros. to make amends. Lucas then requested that the studio help fund Schrader’s film and Warner Bros. really had no choice but to oblige.
Schrader said that he so badly wanted to tell Mishima’s story that he would have made it up on his own had Mishima never existed. The film works as a thinly veiled representation of Schrader’s life, as Linklater mentioned that Schrader saw much of himself in the author.
According to Linklater, Schrader was obsessed with “outsiders, oddballs, rebels, and crazy fucks.”
Beginning with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, which Schrader wrote, the filmmaker’s interest in this kind of in-depth character study has been clear.
“All of his characters are old-school existential heroes,” said Linklater. “They’re guys who are trapped in their own thinking and are stuck in trying to prove they exist.”
The film itself infuses adaptations of Mishima’s writing throughout – the pieces of his work that are the most autobiographical. These instances are highly stylized set pieces that create mood through their expressive use of color and design. Flashbacks of Mishima’s life are presented in black and white, while scenes set in modern day are in color. Throughout the film, we move seamlessly from each of the three ways Schrader depicts Mishima’s life.
According to Linklater, the film never played in Japan even though about half of it was funded by Mishima’s native country.
Check out From the Vaults: “Are You Talking to Me?” for a 1991 interview between Linklater and Schrader.This article appears in June 5 • 2015.