Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters; drama / art-film, USA / Japan, 1985; D: Paul Schrader, S: Ken Ogata, Naoko Otani, Masayuki Shionoya, Junkichi Orimoto, Haruko Kato, Yasosuke Bando, Koichi Sato, Naomi Oki, Miki Takakura, Kenji Sawada, Reisen Ri, Setsuko Karasuma, Toshiyuki Nagashima

Tokyo, 1 9 7 0. The famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima wakes up in his mansion, dresses up, assembles his private army of four and drives with a car to a military garrison... In flashbacks, Mishima's childhood is revealed: he lived with and served his sick grandmother who forbade him to see his mother. He stuttered and was weak, with a doctor deeming him unfit to serve in the army during World War II. After a Greek vacation, he decided to go to a gym and gain strength through muscles... Inserts from three of his novels are shown: a stuttering students sets fire to a Zen temple because he feels inferior confronted with beauty; in order to save his mother from a debt, a man accepts a contract with a sadomasochistic woman who "buys" him to cut his body with a knife. They both die; fanatic nationalists fail in an attempt to overthrow the government and the leader kills himself... In the present, Mishima and his men take a Japanese General hostage and address the garrison cadets. Mishima holds a speech in which he wants to restore the Emperor and is opposed to the influence of the West, but is ridiculed, and thus kills himself through disembowelment.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, a biobic of the controversial Japanese writer Yukio Mishima who later became a nationalist fanatic, "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" is one of the few hermetic movies that becomes actually less and less hermetic the longer one watches its storyline, since everything fits in the end. Writer and director Paul Schrader takes on a very creative, unique and unusual structure to tell this biopic: he presents the last day in Mishima's life, in color, while all the intermittent flashbacks of his childhood and past are presented in black and white—yet he also adds a totally unheard off idea of presenting three segments-adaptations from the author's three novels (!), also in color, to illustrate his life. This is as innovative as something on Godard's level—it would be as if someone would make a biopic about William Shakespeare and also add bonus scenes from "Romeo & Juliet", "Othello" and "Henry IV" to make a commentary on Shakespeare's love life, his jealousy and his betrayal. As far fetched as this may seem, it works meticulously in "Mishima" since the eponymous writer subconsciously revealed a lot of personal, hidden emotions in his novels. This parallel is done in a great match cut when a black and white scene of a kid Mishima stuttering cuts to a scene in color of a grown student stuttering from his future novel "The Temple of the Golden Pavillon" from 1 9 5 6.

In that excerpt from the novel, the stuttering student is lectured by another student with a limp foot, who gives him advice: "Face the fact you'll never be loved. It's the same for everybody. You can trick girls into loving your deformity." The student with the limp foot then falls in front of a girl and asks her to help him stand up, and she does out of pitty, and as they walk away, he turns around towards the stuttering student. This is there since it helps explain Mishima's later life: fearing he won't be loved because he stutters and is weak, he learns how to talk normally and goes to a gym to gain muscles and a strong body, as to not feel inferior or worthless compared to beauty. It seems as if Schrader is using clips from Mishima's novels as a psychoanalysis of the writer's persona. All the clips from the novels, including "Kyoko's House" and "Runaway Horses", are presented in a distinctive way, as highly artificial constructs to underline that feature: "The Temple of the Golden Pavillon" is set in a small studio set, with a miniature, 15ft tall temple, surrounded by walls with drawings of hills and bamboo trees. The sets in "Kyoko's House" is surrounded by a black background (in one such micro-set, the hero Osamu eats with his friends on a food stand that just rotates, while people walk around them, with darkness all around them); and in "Runaway Horses", red stones appear on a meadow. Philip Glass composes the great musical score, and some of it was reused again in "The Truman Show". In one scene, a pubescent Mishima reads a book and narrates ("Suddenly I came across a picture whose only purpose had been to lie in wait for centuries and ambush me... My hand unconsciously began a motion it had never been taught") as he spots a painting of a shirtless St. Sebastian with his arms tied up above him, and arrows in his body. As Mishima narrates: "The author is the ultimate voyeur. I didn’t just want to be the seer, I wanted to be seen." He made a short movie starring himself, because he wanted to be seen. And in that movie, he plays a liuetenant who commits hara-kiri. The motive of suicide or death is repeated several times in the movie, as a foreshadowing of the end. "Mishima" is a challenging, but also fascinating and hypnotic depiction of repressed passion, neurosis and complexities in Japan's society that almost finds its own movie language to tell its story. 

Grade:+++

Us

Us; horror, USA, 2019; D: Jordan Peele, S:  Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

When she was a little girl, Adelaide got lost in an amusement park and found a double of herself in the house of mirrors. In the present, Adelaide is married to Gabriel and has two kids, Zora and Jason. They make a trip to Santa Cruz. One night, four dark silhouettes appear outside their house. The strangers breaks inside and are revealed to be the identical doubles of the family, just wearing red hoods. Only Adelaide's clone is able to speak, with a strange voice. They play games with and chase the family, until Gabriel kills his clone in the sea. Gabriel, Adelaide, Zora and Jason escape and flee towards their friends, the Tyler family, but find them killed by their respective clones. Across the country, clones appear to attack people. Adelaide follows her clone to an underground basement where she tells her they were cloned by the government, but the experiment failed and they were abandoned, so they now seek revenge. Adelaide kills her. Back on surface, Adelaide escapes with her family in the car, but it is revealed that she was exchanged by her clone when she was still a little girl in the amusement park.

Jordan Peele's follow-up to his surprise hit "Get Out", "Us" is a somewhat better film since it plays out almost as a pure horror without pretentious social issues, instead presenting these social issues in a much more subtle, genuine and unobtrusive way. The freaky story of a family attacked by their own clones builds its disturbance factor on the typical element of the horror genre where people are faced with the unexplainable that is a mysterious threat, but Peele also adds some neat questions about identity and chance, which he even mentioned in an interview: "For us to have our privilege, someone suffers. That's where the Tethered connection, I think, resonates the most, is that those who suffer and those who prosper are two sides of the same coin." Truly, if the family lived on the surface, and their clones underground, questions are posed about what would happen between two identical people, one living a normal life, the other a life full of hardship, similar to Mark Twain's novel "The Prince and the Pauper". There are references to Carpenter's "The Thing" and fears of an intruder taking one's place, but Peele's direction is at times sadly too conventional and routine: the first 30 minutes are boring; the plot holes are significant (why didn't the clones attack sooner? What were they waiting for all this time? Why did the clones "play" with Adelaide and her family, allowing them to escape, but somehow the clones of the Tylers were killed instantly? How were the people cloned? And how many were cloned, since it is implied that all of America has clones, which is too far fetched); and he is not able to create a truly inspired scary mood, as some other horror directors did. However, the twist ending is great, and the creepy concept is sufficient to engage the viewers.

Grade:++

Seinfeld (Season 2)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1991, D: Tom Cherones, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards  

George breaks up with girlfriend Marlene, only to be stunned to find out later that Jerry began dating her... After their first date, George leaves embarrassingly desperate messages on the answering machine of Carol. He asks Jerry to go to Carol’s apartment and replace her tape... Jerry wants to subtly dissuade Elaine not to rent an apartment above him, fearing his ex-girlfriend might interfere with his new dates... After an imaginary heart attack, George sees a holistic healer whose potion leads him to an ambulance... Jerry and Elaine have sex out of boredom... Kramer promises Jerry an illegal cable guy... 

“Seinfeld's” season 2 is an improvement compared to the first season, offering comedian Jerry Seinfeld in a more assertive stance and better articulated stories. It’s again about everyday trivialities without any high concept or an overarching storyline, which is why every episode can be viewed isolated. The jokes are a “hit-or-miss” affair: some work better, some work less. Michael Richards as Kramer also tends to overact his role as a hyperactive kid, making his antics forced at times. But at least two episodes rise through the ranks, are excellent and can be considered a prototype of “classic Seinfeld”: episodes 2.7 and 2.11. In the former, George insults his boss and quits his job on a whim, but then realizes he doesn’t have that many options on the job market, so he simply slyly returns to his old job on Monday, and feigns as if he was only joking about quitting. In order to take revenge on his boss and put something in his drink, George instructs Elaine to distract the boss. The boss is uninterested, but then turns around when Elaine starts a fake monologue about how she enjoys going to a nudist colony, or locking herself up in the office so that she can be naked there. 

The latter, episode 2.11, “The Chinese Restaurant”, acts almost as Hitchcock’s “Rope” among sitcoms, since it breaks all the TV rules by presenting a minimalistic setting of Jerry, George and Elaine waiting at the lobby of the restaurant, and thus the whole episode plays out only on one location, but their dialogues and wit keep the viewers’ attention until the end. Even the dialogues in said episode are deliciously inspired: "I'll tell you what they should do, they should combine the two jobs. Make it one job: cop-garbage man. I always see cops having nothing to do, grab a broom! Start sweeping!" or  "Cannibalism. What do they say? I mean, they’re eating, you know. This is good! Who is this?" Episode 2.6 isn't that grand, but it has a hilarious finale: after going back and forth disputing over whether a man stole a small statue from Jerry's apartment, Kramer is able to return the statue and George holds it in his hands, in amazement—Kramer then pats George on the back, who drops the statue and it breaks on the floor. The final episode, 2.12, also isn't that great, but it has a truly great running joke: at a restaurant, George extinguishes a menu that was set on fire and points out that the waiter left it too close to the candle, which causes the manager to fire said waiter, Antonio. Plagued by guilt for making a man unemployed, George and Kramer visit Antonio's apartment to console him, but leave the door open, and thus his cat escapes outside. However, in a typical Seinfeldesque twist, Antonio returns and hugs George, explaining that a gas leak caused an explosion that killed five people, including his replacement, so that George causing him to lose his job actually saved his life. Despite some bland bits, this season hits its targets better than the previous one, and shows that "Seinfeld" still feels fresh today.

Grade:++

Seinfeld (season 1)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1989 / 1990, D: Art Wolff, Tom Cherones, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards

New York. Seinfeld is a comedian who copes trying to live in his apartment, while his friends visit him: George Costanza, Elaine and Kramer. An old friend, Laura, travels to New York and wants to stay over at his place for the weekend... George finds a new apartment for Jerry, equipped with a garden and two bedrooms, but then George warms up too much to the apartment and wants it himself... Seinfeld tries to finally break all ties with an annoying childhood friend, Joel, who keeps calling him on the phone... After an investment in a stock that keeps falling, Seinfeld sells it, but George keeps it, and earns a lot of money when it bounces back and becomes profitable. 

The first season of “Seinfeld”—consisting out of only five episodes—feels either as a lame pirated rip-off of the future “Seinfeld” at his prime, or as a clumsy forerunner to something that has potential for much more. The pilot episode is surprisingly weak, forgettable and bland, featuring no Elaine, and almost appears as if Jerry Seinfeld didn’t care that much to invest more effort into it. Some producers evaluating the pilot even concluded that it is overshadowed by the similar “It's Gary Shandling's Show”, which was already gaining steam at that time. The first true typical “Seinfeld” moment shows up only in the second episode, and ignites an appetite for more: Jerry attends a diner and meets an attractive woman, but his maneuvering room is limited since the woman sits next to a man who acts cordial with her the entire time, while Jerry’s ex-girlfriend Elaine is sitting next to Jerry. At best, Jerry finds out the woman works as a lawyer in a specific company, so he hatches a crazy plan: he goes inside said company with George, and watches hundreds of employees entering, hoping to meet the woman again among the crowd and then feign a conversation. As they are waiting, George asks what excuse they will give for being in the building in the first place, but they cannot agree upon the official version: Jerry wants to pretend to visit a friend, since that sounds “more realistic” than George pretending of being an architect, even though the latter objects: “Please! I can be an architect!” Another good one is when Jerry and George flip a coin over who will get a great new apartment, but the coin hits the table, and then falls on the ground—and it is tails, so George loses, but he immediately protests that the coin flip was invalid because it hit the table: "Interference!" Seinfeld builds episodes without any real plot, it’s all anecdotes over anecdotes, but he manages to find several clever observations about people and their little patterns of behavior, which is amusing to watch. While “It's Gary Shandling's Show” was at the time better and had a stronger head start, “Seinfeld” slowly but steadily prevailed in the long run, eventually becoming one of the most successful shows of the 90s, and is remembered even today, while the former is forgotten, demonstrating how sometimes the authors don’t have to be better, just more sympathetic.   

Grade:++