a fascinating adaptation of Mishima’s masterful book

Critique
Drama by Kon Ichikawa, with Raizô Ichikawa, Tatsuya Nakadai (1958, Japan, 1h40). Re-released in theaters on January 15th ★★★★☆

A young, stuttering and silent monk, with a torso scarred by stab wounds, is arrested for setting fire to the Golden Temple, an architectural masterpiece and high religious symbol of Kyoto. It was in 1958, two years after the release of the novel by Yukio Mishima – an author torn between his demons (his homosexuality) and his radical thirst for nationalist purity – that Kon Ichikawa adapted this masterful, tortured and ambiguous book.

Less recognized than some of his contemporaries but no less major in the history of post-war Japanese cinema, the author of “The Harp of Burma” signs a film where the abrasive staging marries the self-destructive madness of the hero whose infirmity resonates here as an echo of the surrender of Japan. His work on the prison geometry of the settings, the sharp contrasts as well as the play of shadow and diffused light serve to reveal the dilemmas of this antihero disgusted to the extreme by the “impure” hypocrisy of men of faith.