ON THIS LINK

(1985) The life of the controversial Japanese novelist — both for his Nobel-worthy art and for his über-flamboyant life — in four symbolic Acts (Beauty, Art, Action, Harmony of Pen and Sword) and on three planes: bw flashbacks to his previous life, seeing the lonely, sickly boy before he became the world-famous bodybuilder/writer/actor; highly colored and stylized dramatizations of sequences from his books The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (previously filmed as Ichikawa’s Conflagration), Kyoko’s House, and Runaway Horses; and a docudramatic treatment of the last day of his life, leading up to his own theatrically-staged seppuku.