Conflagration Reviews

In relating Yukio Mishima's story of a novice monk who destroyed a nationally treasured temple, director Kon Ichikawa could easily have opted for one of two approaches -- showing his protagonist as mad or as wholly justified. Wisely he chooses neither. Over the course of the film he portrays both the roots of his protagonist Raizo Ichikawa's dissatisfaction -- most related to the corruption of Buddhism, but some not -- and the full weight of his horrific action. Beginning with the arrest of the arsonist, the film then opts for a fairly complex system of flashbacks to relate the events leading up to the arrest, from his youthful adoption of the shrine as a symbol of Buddhist virtue to his later realization that most of what now passes for virtue within the religious community is strictly superficial. Provocative by design, the story occasionally relies too heavily on shock value to get its point across, as in a scene in which an American soldier thanks the confused lead for accidentally inducing his girlfriend to miscarry. But on the whole it has the air of tremendous gravity, coming across as a serious inquiry into matters too often left unspoken, and a harrowing exploration of the damage one psyche can sustain over the course of a short lifetime.