This is the second time I’ve watched this movie but the first time I’ve really gotten it. What mastery. Kurosawa manages a wide range of characters here, all the while maintaining big stakes for everyone. High and Low is theatrical, cinematic and even novelistic. It’s among my favorites of his.
More than previously, I was impressed by the way Kurosawa uses the tools of the cinema here. You have to watch the whole frame to get what’s happening in most scenes. For example, when Gondo is talking with his evil assistant, the camera isn’t on the two faces in the conversation but on the scene, so you can see how the police, the wife and the chauffeur are reacting to the conversation. That’s theatrical, but also very cinematic since the frame is communicating a lot of information about several characters at the same time. I think of this in Altman or PT Anderson. Or Renoir. I didn’t realize this technique was part of Kurosawa’s style. One of the phone conversations is another great example of cinema economy. The scene starts with Gondo talking on the phone, and the soundtrack continues with the conversation while the visuals cut from an image of Gondo on the phone to an image of everyone listening to a recording of the conversation. Again, we can see how the conversation is affecting everyone in the movie with the screen full of characters.
High and Low also builds and builds the stakes until they are so high that you can’t imagine things could ever work out. Not only is the kidnap victim at risk, but so is Gondo’s career. And Kurosawa uses the Japanese culture of honor to raise the stakes even more, and to use this single kidnapping situation to question the entire economic development that Japan has undergone since the end of the war. Early, the question is whether the corporate types will throw away quality and integrity in order to do business. We learn that they will do so through the actions of Gondo’s assistant and through Gondo’s refusal to compromise on quality. But the story then shifts to the question of whether Gondo will sacrifice his own material well-being for the life of the chauffeur’s son. And when that’s decided, a large social question emerges; Will society respect and reward honor? Throughout High and Low, we feel that nothing less than the culture of Japan itself is under stress, whether traditional values will bend to the demands of capital or not. There’s a Shakespearean quality to the questions here as well as to the scope of the inquiry.
I like the range here, too, another Shakespearean element that makes even episode-based movies like High and Low feel epic in scope. As the title implies, there is intrigue and conflict among those high on the hill, and there is grunt work, both among the police and the criminals, among those in the lower parts of the city. In one compelling sequence, the police tail a suspect through honky-tonk bars and drug dens. In this film, Kurosawa takes his camera through a big range of environments.
I also always respond to the humanity in Kurosawa, too, which can border on cute but which doesn’t lapse into maudlin. In the sequence on the train, the little aside when the policeman nods off captures both Kurosawa’s humanity as well as his use of comic touches to lighten the action.I really liked this movie on the second viewing, and I’m sure it will hold up under subsequent.
