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.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Akira Kurosawa film:
Red Beard (1965)