Staring Into The Sun - MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (1985)

The lows of solipsism and the highs of stargazing - director Paul Schrader and Yukio Mishima indulge in both as they search for the purest forms of their respective disciplines. In this fierce 1985 biopic, Schrader marries his subject's facts and fictions, words and worlds, arts and actions, in order to resolve not only the dilemmas that plagued the late author and nationalist, but his own reach towards transcendental style in film. Join your hosts as they take to the atmosphere in a much more aesthetically inclined episode than usual, in an attempt to disentangle the contradictions put in play by both authors, and just how long both spectator and auteur can pour themselves into the pursuit of such an unfathomable text before they burn up in the process.

Thomas Prasch's Article “'So I Found Another Form of Expression': Art and Life/Art in Life in Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters"