“High and Low” is a thriller par excellence
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This is a re-issue of an early Criterion release from way back in 1998. It still has the original Spine Number 24.
According to "The Film Snob´s Dictionary," Akira Kurosawa is the kind of director that a true film snob "generally scoffs at… deeming (him) to be a mere name-drop for bourgeois losers wishing to seem cultured."
It´s funny ´cause it´s true.
It can often be frustrating to convince an audience that "doesn´t go to movies to read" to take a chance on foreign films. Equally exasperating, however, is hearing back from a formerly foreign-language-averse viewer who says "I finally watched ´Seven Samurai´ and you were right; foreign movies rock! Next I´m gonna check out ´Das Boot.´"
Why does the film snob breathe a heavy sigh at this display of excitement? Because the film snob thinks, "Yeah, ´Seven Samurai´ is great, but it´s just an adventure movie that happens to be in another language. It´s not really a foreign movie at all! Go watch ´Last Year in Marienbad´ instead, you bourgeois loser!" Well, maybe not quite like that, but Kurosawa´s perception as a "Western" director of genre films worked against him not just among film snobs, but also in Japan where he struggled so hard to gain acceptance that he had to turn to outside funding for most of his later films, including "Ran" (1985).
I plead guilty to being a film snob, and to having a huffy reaction to the "Seven Samurai phenomenon" despite the fact that I think it´s a phenomenal movie. It´s hard to resist the temptation to pooh-pooh Kurosawa because he´s so "Western," but it´s really a false impression that makes it easy to categorize and thus dismiss this extraordinary director. Even if we accept the (incorrect) description of Kurosawa as a "Western" director, it´s fair to ask "So what if he is?" We (film snobs) celebrate Jim Jarmusch as a "European-style director" after all.
If Kurosawa wanted to shed the "Western" label, he did himself no favors by adapting American mystery writer Ed McBain´s novel "King´s Ransom." Kurosawa and his team of screenwriters relocated the action to Japan but kept the book´s basic premise. An executive in a shoe company has grand plans to take over the corporation, but is blindsided when a kidnapper calls to inform him that his son has been abducted and then demands an outrageous ransom. Of course, he has to pay to get his beloved son back, but there´s an immediate twist. It turns out the kidnapper nabbed the son of the executive´s chauffeur by mistake, and the main tension of the film shifts abruptly. How much will you pay to ransom someone else´s child? Is the life of a child of a lower class worth any less than one from a wealthy family?
The executive´s name is Kingo Gondo, played by the great Toshiro Mifune. At first he refuses to pay the ransom for Shinichi, the kidnapped boy. It´s not his child, after all, so how dare the kidnapper expect him to pay 30 million yen for him! But the kidnapper doesn´t care, and suspects he knows Gondo´s weakness: a guilty conscience. Gondo must decide whether to spend his entire fortune, squandering his life´s work and his family´s well-being, to prevent someone else´s child from being murdered. It´s a moral quandary that would do a Dostoevsky novel proud.
"High and Low" benefits from a great story and a truly great screenplay. The focus of the narrative shifts at several key points. Just when you think you know where the entire film is going, the central tension is resolved, only to introduce a new one. Even more remarkable is the way that different characters rise to prominence during different sequences. With Mifune´s star power, you would expect him to be in front of the camera invirtually every scene, but Gondo disappears from the film for extended stretches. In some cases, Shinichi and his father Aoki (Yutaka Sada) are the main characters. More often, it´s the police who occupy our attention.
Like David Fincher´s surprisingly sober and adroit "Zodiac" (2007), "High and Low" is a police procedural in which we watch law enforcement officials dot every "i" and cross every "t." Merely locating Shinichi isn´t enough. Merely determining the identity of the kidnapper does not suffice. They have to make the charges stick, and they have to do everything by the book. There are really no surprises left by the end of the film: we know who did what, where and why, but we are completely riveted as we watch the authorities methodically pursue their suspect, and the final result of the chase is never a certainty.
The English title of the film is "High and Low," but the more proper translation would be "Heaven and Hell." Both provide an allegorical framework for the film´s central theme, the great divide between classes. The English translation works better in a literal sense. Gondo´s mansion crouches on a hilltop overlooking the town below, as if he and his privileged family were in the clouds staring down at the ant-sized commoners scurrying on the ground.
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[release]24236[/release]