High and Low: A Noir that Takes on Capitalism
If heaven can be a place on earth, so can hell. Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), the executive director of the National Shoes, learns this the hard way.
During a business meeting at his Yokohama mansion, he chastises his colleagues for plotting to oust the company president to produce inferior products for quick profit. After dismissing them, he reveals his own plan to his wife (Kyoko Kagawa) and secretary (Tatsuya Mihashi): he has secured 50 million yen by mortgaging everything he owns to fund a leveraged buyout of the company.
Suddenly, the phone rings. The man on the line claims to have kidnapped Gondo’s son, Jun, and demands 30 million yen for the boy’s safe return. The shoe executive promises his terrified wife he will do anything to reclaim their son…only for Jun to stroll into the living room. Yet Shinichi (Masahiko Shimizu), the son of Gondo’s chauffeur, Aoki (Yutaka Sada) is missing. The mysterious man calls again, admitting his mistake yet still demands the ransom or he’ll kill the boy.
A police team, led by Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai), gets involved and advises Gondo on how to deal with the kidnapper, though the decision of whether or not to pay the ransom despite the fact that he has no familial or legal responsibility toward Shinichi, is up to him. After agonizing over what to do, Gondo finally decides to pay. Per the kidnapper’s instruction, he packs the ransom in a briefcase and throws it (and his future) out of a bullet train window.
The rest of the film focuses on the police investigation, which leads to the identification of the kidnapper, a medical intern named Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), who lives in the slums just below Gondo’s home. Further clues implicate him in the murder of two accomplices to Shinichi’s kidnapping, leading to his arrest and eventual death sentence. Before meeting his end, he asks for a prison meeting with Gondo, where the two finally meet.
A Critique of Capitalism
A central theme in High and Low that is rarely explored in Kurosawa’s films is the ruthlessness of capitalism. Given that half of his movies are samurai flicks, this makes sense.
In my previous article, I mentioned that Kurosawa addressed corporate corruption in his 1960 film The Bad Sleep Well. However, the topic was too sensitive in Japan for him to fully explore it, as a thorough examination would have offended the ruling elite. Consequently, his portrayal of capitalism in that film remains superficial, reduced to a simplistic moral of “greedy men bad.”
Rather than focus on the depravity of the upper class, High and Low explores economic disparity and class conflict. It’s in the name: the original title of the film Tengoku to Jigoku means Heaven and Hell in Japanese.
The characters are framed by their economic circumstances — Gondo in his air-conditioned home high above the crowded slums where the inhabitants boil under a heat wave. Yet the lines between heaven and hell blur throughout the picture — Shinichi’s kidnapping and Gondo’s hesitancy to pay the ransom turn his home into a living hell. Gondo himself came from a lower-class background and worked his way to the top only to find himself brought low again. Where do the police fit into all this? They easily transition between Gondo’s home and the hovels below, indicating a middle class able to bridge the gap between these two worlds.
If there is one character who never leaves hell, it is the kidnapper, Takeuchi. From his apartment in the slums, he gets a perfect view of Gondo’s home: white, pristine, comfortable, and dominating him. An ever present question takes over his life: why did someone like Gondo get to live in a hilltop mansion while he sweltered in the slums?
Upon a first watch this might go over viewers’ heads, who may focus more on Gondo’s internal conflict or the race to catch the kidnapper. Despite the religious symbolism, this is a question of the injustices of capitalism, where the privileged live in paradise and lower class live in a virtual hell.
Condemned for Good and Evil
When Gondo visits Takeuchi in prison, the young man tries to provoke him, clinging to a one-sided feud that, given Takeuchi is on death row, has clearly not worked out for him. Takeuchi’s motivation was never about the money. He barely spent any of the ransom. He sought to humiliate Gondo, whom he viewed as a symbol of injustice. As he tells his rival, “It’s amusing to make fortunate men taste the same misery as the unfortunate.”
Yet Gondo sees no point in hating the young man. He has lost his home, his company, and is burdened with insurmountable debt. Hating Takeuchi won’t change anything and neither is his upcoming death — they are both defeated.
While Takeuchi is condemned for committing evil, Gondo is condemned for his righteousness. The film is asking if the son of a chauffeur is worth as much as the son of a businessman. Gondo ultimately understands that Shinichi’s life matters more than his personal success.
This realization seals his fate — while he’s kicked out of the company, the assistant who ratted him out to the board is promoted. His creditors have no patience for his magnanimity, baulking at his choice to save a random child over fulfilling his financial obligations. It’s hard to take this as anything other than a critique of capitalism. High and Low highlights the desperate measures one must take to win at capitalism — trampling on the less fortunate, destroying innocent lives, and forfeiting our humanity.
Wait…Haven’t I Seen this Before?
Kurosawa frequently went to noir when producing material focused on societal issues — Drunken Angel and Stray Dog focused on the crime and poverty prevalent in postwar society, The Bad Sleep Well highlighted corporate corruption, and High and Low confronted income inequality and class conflict. Easily the best crafted and directed of Kurosawa’s noirs, it is indebted to his previous efforts in the genre.
We first see Takeuchi through the reflection of a dirty canal, making him instantly recognizable as the kidnapper; the filthy water projecting his rottenness. It’s also reminiscent of the dirty pond that symbolized the sickness of postwar society in Drunk Angel. There are many moments in the film that harken back to Kurosawa’s previous noirs: Takeuchi is very similar to the antagonist of Stray Dog, a World War II veteran who robs and kills in order to escape his miserable existence. Stray Dog features a heat wave similar to that of High and Low, yet the former’s is more subtle, the heat highlighting the class difference between the characters. Gondo shares similarities to the protagonist from The Bad Sleep Well: neither succeed in their plans as they refuse to become the cruel hearted capitalists needed to survive in the corporate world.
There is a scene in Drunken Angel where Matsunaga (also played by Toshiro Mifune) stands by his town’s dirty pond, sniffing a carnation he plucked from a flower stall. He was recently diagnosed with tuberculosis and has become committed to taking care of himself. Unfortunately, he is a yakuza, and cannot maintain his standing without the gang lifestyle. Matsunaga throws the carnation into the soiled water, proceeding to drink and gamble away his life.
In High and Low, Takeuchi enters a drug den wearing a carnation, intending to find a guinea pig for a lethal dose of heroin. He plans to use this dose to eliminate his accomplices, whom he suspects will betray him. When he selects his victim, he pulls out the carnation, twirls it between his fingers, and discards it, mirroring his intent to discard the woman’s life. The parallels between these two scenes are too deliberate to be coincidental. Here, Kurosawa masterfully revisits and refines past ideas without merely rehashing old hits.
The End of Kurosawa’s Noirs
Alas, High and Low would be Kurosawa’s final noir. His next film, Red Beard, (1965) would be his last collaboration with Toshiro Mifune. Kurosawa remained in a creative funk for the next 15 years, only directing two films in the 1970s. He was slow to adapt to a changing film industry and had lost his leading man of 17 years, who refused to work with him again after disputes during the filming of Red Beard and to pursue international acting opportunities. His career didn’t fully recover until 1980, with the samurai film Kagemusha. Perhaps he wanted his comeback to be in the genre he was most famous for, or maybe by then it was too late for a traditional noir.
Yet High and Low remains one of his most deftly made films. Along with Kurosawa’s other noirs, it explores the dark side of the Japanese Economic Miracle using a genre that in the US was often apolitical and in Europe deconstructed. As long as the capitalist system prevails, High and Low will remain relevant.
