High and Low (1963)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Film Review

The last of Akira Kurosawa's crime thrillers is a typically dark and murky affair which paints a deeply pessimistic view of contemporary Japanese society.  High and Low is a loose adaptation of Ed McBain's pulp crime novel King's Ransom but, unlike Kurosawa's previous crime films (Drunken Angel, Stray Dog) it is far more strongly influenced by recent French films policiers than classic American film noir of the 1940s and 50s.  The main villain (a conscienceless medical student played by Tsutomu Yamazaki) bears an uncanny resemblance to Alain Delon's Tom Ripley in René Clément's Plein soleil (1960), and references to several other notable French thrillers of the period - including Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur (1955) and Jean Delannoy's Maigret tend un piège (1958) - are easily spotted.  Not for the first time, Kurosawa appropriates the iconography of western cinema and exploits this for his own ends, showing us a picture of modern Japan in which the worst facets of western decadence and traditional Japanese culture collide to create a society that is bitterly divided and morally bankrupt.   The film's original Japanese title Tengoku to jigoku translates as Heaven and Hell, which is particularly apt for a story whose central theme is irreversible moral decline, not of an individual, but of society in general.

High and Low begins with a slow extended sequence that is almost a self-contained morality play.  This concentrates on the moral dilemma that confronts shoe-manufacturing executive Gondo (Toshirô Mifune at his best) when he receives an exorbitant ransom demand from someone who has kidnapped his chauffeur's son.  If Gondo does not pay, the abducted child may be killed; if he does pay, his professional ambitions and family's livelihood will certainly be imperilled.  This first act lasts just under one hour and is confined to one location - Gondo's luxurious house which sits proudly on a hill overlooking the stinking, noisy slums of Yokohama like a warlord's palace.  This immediately presents a striking visual metaphor for the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, a society in which everyone is expected to know his place and show unquestioning subservience to anyone higher up the social pyramid.  The deference that Gondo's chauffeur shows to his employer may seem ludicrously exaggerated to a western audience but it illustrates how deeply class-conscious Japanese society was even in the 1960s (the irony being that Gondo is himself a self-made man).   Through Kurosawa's eyes, Japan looks like a country that is incapable of throwing off its feudal past.

Most of the film's first act consists of long, static takes which create an unbearable tension and steadily growing sense of oppression, which is alleviated only partly when Gondo makes his fateful decision.  The obvious staginess of the sequence does not undermine its dramatic impact, nor does it take anything away from the realism of the situation.  It is in fact one of the most compelling sequences in Kurosawa's entire oeuvre, largely on account of Mifune's performance and some exceptional screenwriting.  It is a relief when, finally, Kurosawa allows us out of Gondo's stifling living room.  The action can now get underway proper, with a short but masterfully crafted sequence shot on a real train, filmed entirely with handheld cameras.  After the film's quasi-theatrical beginning, this abrupt change in style comes as an almost visceral shock to the sytem.  The frenzied montage of short takes and shaky camera motion provide a dramatic shift from the objective to the subjective, and we feel the full force of the anxiety that overtakes Gondo as he becomes a reluctant accomplice in the police operation to find the kidnapper.

After this startling subjective interlude the film changes gear again, this time adopting the form of a conventional (circa 1960s) police procedural drama.  The identity of the kidnapper is revealed to us at an early stage and we have little doubt that he will be caught and punished.  The main interest is just how the police are going to bring him to account, specifically how far the moral boundaries are to shifted in the name of justice.  It is at this point that the journey downwards into Hell begins, slowly and inexorably.  The descent isn't only geographical, from the hill on which Gondo's house sits comfortably, into the seedy back streets, clubs and narcotics dens of Yokohama, it is also a moral descent, and Kurosawa's masterfully noirish mise-en-scène, the unsettling mix of low and high camera shots, makes this blisteringly apparent.

The police who are handling the investigation may start from the moral high ground but it isn't long before they are wading in the gutter, having sunk to the same level as the man they are hoping to catch.  The kidnapper is soon identified, but Chief Detective Tokura (superbly played by Tatsuya Nakadai) is not interested in a quick arrest that will only result in the criminal being put behind bars for at most fifteen years.  He wants to see Takeuchi hang, and so he holds out until the kidnapper has placed his neck firmly in the noose.  Along the way, someone else (an inconsequential specimen of drug-sodden lowlife) gets murdered, but Tokura evidently regards this as a necessary sacrifice to achieve his end.  Takeuchi's ultimate capture is far from being a moral victory; rather, it merely exposes the moral vacuity and inhumanity of his pursuers.

The only character who manages to redeem himself in this blizzard of moral confusion is, of all people, the hard-nosed company executive Gondo; none of the other principal players shows any remorse and all find it disturbingly easy to justify their immoral actions.  Gondo's business partners can come up with a compelling argument as to why they should stop selling quality shoes, as this is apparently what their customers want - cheap, disposable tat.  The kidnapper Takeuchi can cite social inequality and extreme personal hardship as a reasonable defence for his criminal actions: why should he roast in a one-room shack when others wallow in air-conditioned luxury?   Equally, the police will do whatever they think is necessary to bring about a socially desirable outcome - manipulating the media, offering false promises to the victim, even putting innocent people in harm's way.  By the end of the film, the police chief Tokura has even less moral authority than Takeuchi - at least the kidnapper does not pretend to be anything other than what he is, whereas Tokura presents himself as an avenging angel, rewriting the handbook of personal and social morality as he goes along.

The comparison between Takeuchi, the medical student turned kidnapper, and Gondo, the rags to riches success story, is even more striking.  Both started from the same place, penniless obscurity, but whereas Gondo worked within the system and acquired wealth by his own unstinting efforts, Takeuchi merely allows himself to be taken over by jealousy and seeks a shortcut to easy street by criminality.  Gondo may lose his material heaven, but he wins something better, a spiritual equivalent, first by giving up everything he has to save a child's life, and then by showing his persecutor no malice.  Takeuchi begins in a hell that is both physical and spiritual, and there he will remain, for he lacks Gondo's humanity and capacity for change.  In the film's devastating final scene, in which Gondo is finally confronted with the man who has ruined him, it is hard not to feel something for Takeuchi as he bitterly throws away his last opportunity for atonement and is reduced to a shrieking wild animal.  As a steel shutter comes down and Gondo is left to contemplate Takeuchi's final excommunication from mankind, your heart is pierced by the film's final chord of melancholia.  Redemption is not for everyone.

Film Synopsis

Kingo Gondo is a wealthy executive for a leading Japanese shoe manufacturing company.  One evening, he hosts a meeting with several other executives at his luxurious house, which is perched high on a hill overlooking the city of Yokohama.  Most of the group wants the company to boost its short-term profits by making only low quality shoes, but Gondo is opposed to this and insists that the company's reputation will suffer if it goes down this path.  Once his associates have departed, Gondo tells his wife that he is about to acquire a controlling interest in the company and will be in a position to dictate its future strategy.  Just as he is about to pay a deposit for the extra shares he needs to bring this about, Gondo receives a telephone call, from someone who claims to have abducted his young son Jun and demands a large ransom for his safe return. When Jun suddenly appears, Gondo dismisses the call as a hoax, but then realises that it was Jun's playmate, his chauffeur's son, who has been kidnapped in error.  The kidnapper calls back and repeats his demand.  Unless Gondo pays up, an innocent boy will die.  Once he has called in the police, Gondo asserts that he will not pay the ransom.  He has worked hard to achieve his present position and he knows that if he gives in he will jeopardise not only his own future, but also that of his wife and son.   Which is more important: the life of a poor man's child or the livelihood of his own family?  Gondo has a difficult decision to make...