Mishima is so tight it comes close to strangeling its own schema. But it doesn't.

Ah, but a noble failure is still a failure, you say. But Mishima is not a failure. No film that asks you to grasp your own life and to consider its ultimate value can be considered a failure.

This handsomely shot movie, with its throbbing Philip Glass score, has a kind of perverse integrity; its mixture of the art house and the hothouse is pure Schrader.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is less about ideology and more about the classic Schrader hero: a man who feels isolated from society and, with no other choice, destroys himself.