oraltext This movie has stayed with me for over 30'years due to the stunning visual imagery and impossibly perfect music score. One of the few movies that inspired me to read he author's books after watching. I wish I could watch this for the first time again!

Damian Bridgeman I saw this originally on Channel 4 (UK) and it was a fantastic film that left a great impression on me. However I saw it on Irish TV recently and there was an added narration by Roy Scheider ("we're going to need a bigger boat!"). This ruined the film for me. His droning monologue adds absolutely nothing to the film, and if anything takes from the films brilliance. I wonder at the new DVD version that has no Roy (due to legal reasons?) would stop people from buying it. Well believe me, the film is much better for it!CheersDamian

tedg Spoilers herein.Paul Schrader isn't an accomplished man in terms of creating novel visions. But he is an alert and active thinker of things cinematic. Whatever he does is worth pondering, even when the picture itself is flawed in some ways. (And even when one of his Italian director friends changes his ideas.)In this case, we have what I consider his most complex notion: a film about a man who lived his life as if it were a film, moreover a film that he could and did write. Even that idea could have been handled in a pedestrian manner, by showing the man and his life. But except for the final suicide episode, Schrader doesn't show the `real' life -- instead he stages episodes from the writings, mostly in a Kabukified dream manner.Schrader's commentary on this DVD is one of the best I know. It remarks that though this life was based on fabrication, the movie was mandated to be based on truth. But the original fiction the subject created is preferred by the Japanese authorities (and apparently the public, still) so the thing has never been released in Japan and the Japanese financiers have denied being so.Adds another level of fabrication to an already rich project.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Baroque A story told in four chapters and in three levels. Flashbacks of Yukio Mishima's life, dramatizations of his written works, and the events of his final day of life.If Mishima was a fictional character, I doubt if anyone would believe or accept such a creation. But he was a real, flesh and blood, human being, which makes the film all the more incredible. Granted that some of the facts have been dramatized or "enhanced" for the screen, but the story is quite factual.A man of many contrasts: A devoted family man who kept a gay lover. A writer who saw his words being "not enough". A patriotic man at home in the present who yearned for a return to Imperial Japan's past glory. A man who struggled to unite movement with action, and saw everything he strove for fall apart at the most critical moment.The film is lovingly made, magnificently acted, painstakingly edited and the musical soundtrack by Philip Glass will stay with you for days. The film's tight budget doesn't show at all.Now available on DVD, this film is a worthy addition to the collections of true cinemaphiles.My rating: 10/10