ARTS EDITED BY ANTHONY CLARKE THE life of the Japanese writer Yu-kio Mishima, who publicly killed himself on 25 November 1979, is material for a powerful, if nasty, film. But the USJapan co-production 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' (Ri-. voli, Cambewell Junction) seals its hero, or villain, almost from sight in a mausoleum of cinematic artifice. For all the formal rigor with which this structure is created, the film's subject becomes more mishmash than Mishima. Although accounts of the making of the film differ, its structure seems to be the result of restrictions imposed by Mishi-ma's widow. She would not allow anything about herself to be included, and there were to be no direct references to her husband's homosexuality. Paul Schrader, the film's American director and co-writer, tries to get around these problems by dividing 'Mishima' into four sections and telling the story on three levels. The sections, or chapters, are Beauty; Art; Action; and Harmony of Pen and Sword. These words reflect the main preoccupations of Mishima's life. One of the three alternating levels shows (in color) Mishima's last day; the other levels are flashbacks (black-and-white) to his youth and manhood, and dramatisations (color) or excerpts from three of his novels, presented in a way to suggest they are autobiographical. There is a futile attempt to create tension or to spring a surprise. It seems that we are not supposed to know that Mishima will kill himself. This is not the only information that Schrader, best-known as the writer of 'Taxi Driver', holds back. Mishima was a literary genius (you may not like his material, but the style is superb), a sadomasochist, a narcissist (he did so many bodybuilding exercises that he thought he was his own greatest artistic creation), a paranoid schizophrenic (or whatever psychiatric term you care to More mishmash than Mishima FILMS NEIL JILLETT use) and a political fruitcake (he wanted to revive the samurai tradition to purify Japan). . All those areas are touched on in the film, yet somehow they come across as pretty tame stuff. Ken Ogata, usually a burningly intense actor, gives a flaccid performance; his Mishima is no more than a mite fanatical. The dramatised excerpts from the novels do not help. They give a heavily filtered view of Mishima, and the stylised stage sets in which they are played, though providing the film with a suitably ritualistic style, increase the distance between the main character and the audience in the cinema. Mishima inadvertently turned himself into a joke, and the film, especially towards the end, does indicate the effect a combination of bemusement, contempt and admiration he had on the Japanese and the world at large. But more often the film ponderously takes the man at his own valuation and fails to show that, above all else, he was ridiculous. If the film had recognised that there lay his tragedy, it might have been much more interesting. OAN GOODWIN, May Pennefather and Audrey Blake are three old Australians with much the same story to tell. And, in 'Red Matildas' (State Film Centre, East Melbourne), they tell it with a delightful mixture of charm, naivety, wisdom and an awareness of what it is like to ; be both ordinary and extraordinary. 'Red Matildas', written, directed and produced by gJiaron Connolly and Trevor Graham, won me Erwin Rado Award' for best Australian short film at this year's Melbourne Film Festival. You won't learn anything new about Australian or world history from this 54-minute film, but you will get a strong feeling of what it was like to live here in the 1920s and 1930s and to be affected by the Depression and the rise of fascism and what seemed to be the successful social experiments in the Soviet Union. Blake, now 68, lost her job at Melbourne's Hotel Australia when she became a soapbox orator for the Young Communist League. Goodwin, 73, joined the Labor Club at Melbourne University and cut off her plaits, because students were not allowed to wear them down their backs in the 1920s. Pennefather, 75, a Western Australian, toyed with the idea of becoming an Anglican missionary, but instead joined the Communist Party and served as a nurse in Spain during the Civil War. All three women now devote their political energy to the anti-nuclear movement. Between sharply edited newsreel footage of Australian and world events, the women talk directly to the camera, estab- Ken Ogata in 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters': little sense of the ridiculous. lishing their identities, reminiscing about the old days, explaining how they were moved left by a sense that an unjust world offered no reasonable person any alternative. Whatever you think of their views, the three matildas come across attractively as women who have always responded to life instead of watching it pass by. The virtue of this film is that it allows them to share with the rest of us the richness of their experience. PEOPLE like David and Linda in 'Lost in America' (Rivoli, Camber-well Junction) are usually described as a nice young American couple. He is a highly paid big wheel in a Los Angeles advertising agency; she is an executive in a department store. They decide to cash in their considerable worldly goods, buy a mobile home and tour America. They want to" be irresponsible, by which they mean dropping out while hanging on to a financial security blanket But their attempt to give new . meaning to the American dream goes very wrong. .'- - . . This film, which keeps announcing that it is a revised version of 'Easy Rider", has the makings of a sharply cynical comedy about American materialism, and in a few scenes it shows signs of being that But the director and co-writer, Albert Brooks, who also plays David, fudges things. The script is rarely funny and often far too' talkative, and the small amount of action is flat-footed. Brooks and his co-star, Julie Ha-gerty, do not show enough sparkle in their acting to make up for these deficiencies. lOT much happens in The Holcroft lii I Covenant' (Russell), but every time it does Michael Caine, Victoria Ten-nant, Anthony Andrews and the rest of the cast spend much time sitting around and talking about it, on the sensible assumption that the audience probably dozed off and need to be filled in about what is going on. This film, which is both underwritten and over-written and shows every sign of being edited with a food processor, is adapted from a Robert Ludlum novel about the neo-Nazis being on the move again. Showing none of the skill he put into 'The Manchurian Candidate', director John Frankenheimer lamely tries to fey up this effort with a street orgy in Berlin and a spot of incest m Geneva. The three writers are equally; unsuccessful in their attempts to give the script some touches of cultural class (sample: "I cannot stay. Tonight I conduct the Mahler." "Ah, the Mahler!"). ? : t'
