High, Low, Lower

As I said before, I am not a foreign movie fanboy. But everyone love Kurosawa, right? And I had never seen High and Low before. This is a different Kurosawa, featuring Toshiro Mifune, but set in "modern" (1960s) times instead of the samurai era.

Mifune plays an influential board member of National Shoe, involved in a struggle over the company's direction. He wears a small mustache and slicked back hair, looking very Clark Gable. He is independent, principled and proud - until he finds out that his son has been kidnapped. Then he is ready to bend his principles. Until he finds out that it is not his son, but the son of his chauffeur who has been kidnapped. That is a different matter.

The plot of this movie is taken from Ed McBain, the classic author of American policiers. But that isn't the whole of the film. There is a traditional style in Japanese drama, where related or parallel stories take place in Heaven, among the gods, on earth among men, and in Hell, among demons. High and Low follows this pattern.

The first part is set in Heaven, in Mifune's high-rise apartment, overlooking Tokyo. The gods are corporate directors, business men. There is more than a bit of parody here, since the corporation makes women's shoes, but still, it is far above the concerns of humans.

The second part takes place on earth, among the police searching for the kidnapped child. This world is human - the police make jokes and mix with all members of society. The police team is headed by Tetsuya Nakadai in one of his rare good-guy roles.

The last section is set in a Hell of drug addicts and thugs. I've never seen a more noir influenced Kurosawa, not even in Stray Dog. Yet it is very Japanese, formalism matched with an insane humanism. That is, the characters are realistically human, flawed to the point of insanity, yet their interactions are rigidly constrained by society and the structure of the drama.

At 2:20, it ends almost too soon. And leaves you wondering at the mastery of Kurosawa.