"High and Low" is Akira Kurosawa's unsung masterpiece, it's strikingly similar to "Straw Dog" in its meticulous depiction of police procedural and the indirect canvas it offers for an exploration of Japan's social strata in the mid-sixties, from the highest layers to the lowest depths, presenting in painstaking precision the cohabitation between the upper and lower classes, made of protocoled compliance and officious defiance. It's one of the few modern dramas directed by the Master, as if his usual period "Samurai" movies wouldn't fit the social significance he's aiming at.
To understand that, one should get to Kurosawa's vision of humanism, only a virtue if the character has a choice. In his Jidageiki movies, samurai or warriors lived under a code so strict that their bravery was closer to the realms of duty than genuine heroism. Only until his masterpieces in color, Kurosawa could portray characters the viewers could both admire and relate to, from the petty criminal played by Tatsuya Nakadai, charged to impersonate a lord in "Kagemusha" to the greedy and ambitious sons in "Ran", Kurosawa was never better as painting the flaws of humanity with a firm but forgiving hand and this is why "Rashomon" is such a milestone, it offered a new vision of characterization, not relying on personalities' actions but on their perception by or resonance on other people's live. Kurosawa is perhaps to cinema both an Einstein and a Sartre, bringing relativity and existentialism.
We're good or we're bad by choice not by duty.
This is why there always comes a point in his dramas when a flawed character chooses his destiny and this is why it never worked better than in movies set in the contemporary world such as "Drunken Angel" and "Ikiru" and even more in police procedurals like "Stray Dog" because these film offered a panoramic view on a Japanese society devoid of such codes of honor as the Bushido, so socially broad and ethically uncertain that it became the arena where the forces of evil and good, greed and generosity, calculations and disinterest, confronted each other. "High and Low" is the culmination of that introspection through one of the most painful choices ever forced upon a man, so vital to the film's emotional backbone that it needed a twenty-minute set-up. The opening is a remarkable exercise in exposition all in detail in concision as if Kurosawa was already experimenting in his directing style the same rigor applied by the detectives in charge of the case.
The residence of Mr.Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is located at the top of a hill offering a panoramic view on the lowest parts, it's vast, well-furnished, his boy has a cowboy disguise and plays with the chauffeur's son, which means that he's rich enough to be a chauffeur. Gondo is a no-nonsense self-made-man and one of the stockholders of a huge national shoe company and is coerced by his associates to make a move against the president whose old-fashioned views are incompatible with their visions of profitability, making lesser shoes but with higher profits. Gondo refuses the deal but what we take for a proof of integrity is contradicted by his plan, he bought enough stock to lead the company alone, which forced him to mortgage his house and twenty years of social ladder climbing; it's a fool-proof make-it-or-break. One phone-call later, he learns that his son has been kidnapped for a ransom of 30 million yens, we expect Gondo to pay, but that would be too easy, there's a catch in that plot.
If not the best or the most iconic Kurosawa, "High and Low" has certainly the greatest premise, the boy was the chauffeur's son, the two kids had switched disguises. The cops come, the chauffeur keeps quiet until he hears his son and then begs his boss to do something. The kidnapper realizes his mistake (which makes sense since there's no reason the son would pretend to be Gondo's) but the dilemma is all the same, either Gondo pays and jeopardizes his future or he lets the kid die. That's the equation. We know a man like Gondo will be likely to pay, it's interesting however to watch him examin his own conscience under the tacit observance of the police officer played by Nakadai. At that point of the review, I don't want to spoil much of the film because it is one to experience, and on three levels: the ethical dilemma, the police investigation and the social documentary on Japan in the 60s where the absorption of the Western way of life went at the expenses of the ancient codes.
While the first part is set completely in Gondo's house, a fitting bridge sequence makes the transition to the investigation that will structure the entire second part, with tracing calls, interrogation, tailings, facial composites and all the archetypes. Gondo is absent for the most part but we feel his presence from the efforts displayed by the public opinion, the chauffeur, his son and the police. Such a fruitful zeal couldn't have been possible if the right choice wasn't made; which raises a challenging question: is it always a matter of doing your job or is morality the true driver or people's actions? Had Gondo made the wrong choice, his public and private aura would've been destroyed, his decision was moral and ethical but let's not pretend it wasn't also practical. Still, maybe it's because Gondo climbed so high that he could have a full view on the low he could sink, materially or symbolically.
And when the investigation leads us to the criminal, we realizes he'd jus offered us the perfect counter-example as man who was so low that he saw the highest spot reached by Gondo with envy and jealousy instead of climbing his way to the top. Indeed "High and Low" is a captivating immersion into the heights humanity can raise itself above and the lowest lows it can plunge in... and it's a terrific cop thriller!
To understand that, one should get to Kurosawa's vision of humanism, only a virtue if the character has a choice. In his Jidageiki movies, samurai or warriors lived under a code so strict that their bravery was closer to the realms of duty than genuine heroism. Only until his masterpieces in color, Kurosawa could portray characters the viewers could both admire and relate to, from the petty criminal played by Tatsuya Nakadai, charged to impersonate a lord in "Kagemusha" to the greedy and ambitious sons in "Ran", Kurosawa was never better as painting the flaws of humanity with a firm but forgiving hand and this is why "Rashomon" is such a milestone, it offered a new vision of characterization, not relying on personalities' actions but on their perception by or resonance on other people's live. Kurosawa is perhaps to cinema both an Einstein and a Sartre, bringing relativity and existentialism.
We're good or we're bad by choice not by duty.
This is why there always comes a point in his dramas when a flawed character chooses his destiny and this is why it never worked better than in movies set in the contemporary world such as "Drunken Angel" and "Ikiru" and even more in police procedurals like "Stray Dog" because these film offered a panoramic view on a Japanese society devoid of such codes of honor as the Bushido, so socially broad and ethically uncertain that it became the arena where the forces of evil and good, greed and generosity, calculations and disinterest, confronted each other. "High and Low" is the culmination of that introspection through one of the most painful choices ever forced upon a man, so vital to the film's emotional backbone that it needed a twenty-minute set-up. The opening is a remarkable exercise in exposition all in detail in concision as if Kurosawa was already experimenting in his directing style the same rigor applied by the detectives in charge of the case.
The residence of Mr.Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is located at the top of a hill offering a panoramic view on the lowest parts, it's vast, well-furnished, his boy has a cowboy disguise and plays with the chauffeur's son, which means that he's rich enough to be a chauffeur. Gondo is a no-nonsense self-made-man and one of the stockholders of a huge national shoe company and is coerced by his associates to make a move against the president whose old-fashioned views are incompatible with their visions of profitability, making lesser shoes but with higher profits. Gondo refuses the deal but what we take for a proof of integrity is contradicted by his plan, he bought enough stock to lead the company alone, which forced him to mortgage his house and twenty years of social ladder climbing; it's a fool-proof make-it-or-break. One phone-call later, he learns that his son has been kidnapped for a ransom of 30 million yens, we expect Gondo to pay, but that would be too easy, there's a catch in that plot.
If not the best or the most iconic Kurosawa, "High and Low" has certainly the greatest premise, the boy was the chauffeur's son, the two kids had switched disguises. The cops come, the chauffeur keeps quiet until he hears his son and then begs his boss to do something. The kidnapper realizes his mistake (which makes sense since there's no reason the son would pretend to be Gondo's) but the dilemma is all the same, either Gondo pays and jeopardizes his future or he lets the kid die. That's the equation. We know a man like Gondo will be likely to pay, it's interesting however to watch him examin his own conscience under the tacit observance of the police officer played by Nakadai. At that point of the review, I don't want to spoil much of the film because it is one to experience, and on three levels: the ethical dilemma, the police investigation and the social documentary on Japan in the 60s where the absorption of the Western way of life went at the expenses of the ancient codes.
While the first part is set completely in Gondo's house, a fitting bridge sequence makes the transition to the investigation that will structure the entire second part, with tracing calls, interrogation, tailings, facial composites and all the archetypes. Gondo is absent for the most part but we feel his presence from the efforts displayed by the public opinion, the chauffeur, his son and the police. Such a fruitful zeal couldn't have been possible if the right choice wasn't made; which raises a challenging question: is it always a matter of doing your job or is morality the true driver or people's actions? Had Gondo made the wrong choice, his public and private aura would've been destroyed, his decision was moral and ethical but let's not pretend it wasn't also practical. Still, maybe it's because Gondo climbed so high that he could have a full view on the low he could sink, materially or symbolically.
And when the investigation leads us to the criminal, we realizes he'd jus offered us the perfect counter-example as man who was so low that he saw the highest spot reached by Gondo with envy and jealousy instead of climbing his way to the top. Indeed "High and Low" is a captivating immersion into the heights humanity can raise itself above and the lowest lows it can plunge in... and it's a terrific cop thriller!