High and Low (1963)

I spoil something significant that happens halfway through this film, so don't read this before watching it if that bothers you.

The film opens with credits over a few atmospheric shots of a smoky, crowded city set to somber music.  We find ourselves in a house standing at the top of a hill overlooking the city.  The owner of the home, and the main character of High and Low, is Kingo Gondo, an executive of National Shoes, played by Toshiro Mifune.

He and the other executives of National Shoes argue over whether it's better to make flimsy shoes that will cost less to make, or durable shoes that will cost more.  The other executives insist on the former, arguing that shoes are an accessory.  But Gondo insists that shoes need to be more than that: a shoe must carry all of a person's weight.  This film could have also been called "Hats and Shoes" based on this scene.  It's not just that the other executives are so out of touch that they can't see the difference between hats and shoes, but that their social role, relative to the other characters in this film, is more analogous to a hat's than a shoe's.  They hand Gondo one of their new shoes and he tears it apart with his bare hands. 

After Gondo's argument with the executives, the film's real conflict arises.  His chauffeur Aoki's son has been kidnapped, and he's the only one who can pay the ransom and save him.  If he pays, he and his family will face financial ruin.  He took out loans in the hope that he could overrule the other executives of National Shoes and run the company the way he prefers. 

Gondo has a habit of stepping out onto his balcony and observing the city when he needs to think.  For the whole time Gondo struggles with his decision, the film takes away his freedom to indulge in this habit.  The police, suspecting that the kidnapper spied on Gondo's home, order him to close his curtains and don't let him out onto his balcony.  We can see how distressing this is for him: as Gondo moves around the room, he gravitates toward the walls.  There are points in conversation when the characters stop and have a moment of silence.

 

Gondo finally decides to pay the kidnapper.  Yutaka Sada's performance as Aoki isn't very prominent in the film, but in this scene it's remarkable. Aoki's mix of relief, frustration, and anxiety about the weight of an immeasurable debt comes across simply from the tension in Sada's body when Aoki kneels before Gondo in gratitude.

 

After the child is rescued, the film shifts focus from away from Gondo and turns to the police's search for the kidnapper.  We leave his house and find ourselves in the city below.  We can feel not just the summer heat, but the grimy discomfort it causes.  It's in the lighting, the actors' body language and the sweat on their brows, and and the presence of electric and paper fans in every other shot.  It gets worse when we see how many police officers cram into a single room in the course of their work.

The people in the city below live in tiny compartments a hundred times more restrictive than Gondo’s house.  The omnipresence of ambient sounds means there are no more periods of silent thought.  It's like the shift in Bresson's films before and after The Trial of Joan of Arc: character dominates the first half, and we come to know about the characters' tics and habits. But in the second half, the setting eclipses any individual character.

 

In the second half of the film, the effort to catch the kidnapper is built up piece by piece by both police and civilians.  Those who offer their help often say they're willing to do so because of their admiration for Gondo, whether because he decided to pay the kidnapper or because he showed respect for his employees when he was an executive at National Shoes.  In High and Low, witnessing Gondo's sacrifice motivates other characters to contribute to the effort to catch the kidnapper.  If there's any hope for the victory of integrity in this film, it's here.  But it's by no means reassuring.  The characters' efforts are imperfect, and even destructive. 

 

Gondo turns out to be a sympathetic protagonist, and the antagonist is very unsympathetic.  Some watch this movie and see it as a portrayal of how the "right" sort of person, like Gondo, will succeed even in the face of adversity while the less virtuous lash out.  But it would be facile to look at the way the film portrays the destitute addicts and the cruel bankers and executives who exploit and abuse Gondo and chalk it all up to abstract "adversity."  Worse, it would be perverse to look at the film's most disturbing scene, when the police pass through an alley occupied with heroin addicts suffering from withdrawal, and feel nothing but contempt.  

 

We spend the first half of the film closely observing one character who squirms from not being able to get a breath of fresh air on his balcony, and the second half watching characters constantly assailed by heat and noise.  Again, it's like Bresson's later films, where individual ethics are eclipsed by the functions of industrial modernity.  Some people have an edge on their own merits, but what it takes to help people has become complicated.  In the end, the addicts are gravely harmed not just by the film's villain, but by the well-intentioned actions of the police.  

 

Kurosawa's techniques and preoccupations are different from Bresson's, but well-suited to illustrate this.  His ways of dividing space, his interest in public health, his tendency to highlight important emotional beats with big, somewhat exaggerated movements of actors' bodies or of crowds; these elements, with the way the second half packs details into the frame, make the film suspenseful, moving, and disturbingly tactile at different turns. 

 

While the film is undeniably about class, it isn't obviously political.  It more closely resembles Kurosawa's other films Seven Samurai and Red Beard, in which people with rare skills and privileges decide it's their duty to help those who have less than them.  Gondo is another of these figures, but actually coming to this decision is much more of an ordeal for him than the heroes of those films, and as much as we might respect him, his victory feels a little more incomplete.  While Kurosawa's heroes rarely get to fully enjoy their victories, at least in Seven Samurai and Red Beard they get a bit more certainty than Gondo gets.  He's going to try his best, and we know he's capable of enduring a great deal.  But there are still many unaddressed problems; it ends with Gondo's reflection in a pane of glass, and you wonder what questions he's asking himself.