“The scenes from three of Mishima’s novels that Schrader crams into the narrative are flat, repetitive, and nauseatingly over-staged”

They are over-staged because they are not supposed to be real, but to represent fiction inside fiction (think about how “real” that is in the first place). Have you seen Dogville? Have you heard of Bertol Brecht?

Reading this review made me sad, and not just because I like the film.