• 天国と地獄  (High and Low)

11/14/20 (Sat), Tokyo

This 1963 Kurosawa work is really two films. In the first half, a well off industrialist (Mifune Toshiro) is battling for control of a major shoe company with other board members who want to cut corners on product quality for greater profit. The industrialist refuses to give in and throws his entire fortune into a secret deal that will give him a majority stake.

Just when that deal is set to go through, he receives a call that his son has been kidnapped. Frantically, he agrees to pay the enormous ransom with the money he had gathered despite knowing that this will ruin him financially. Then unexpectedly the son wanders in. It turns out that the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the chauffeur’s son instead. The industrialist is now faced with a moral dilemma: does he save the boy at devastating cost to himself, or save his own family from a bleak future? In several threatening phone calls, the kidnapper seems to take pleasure in belittling the industrialist, suggesting that money is only one goal. After much tension and soul searching, the industrialist agrees to pay. He is instructed to put the money in specific denominations in two briefcases, board a train and throw the cases from a window when given the signal. He does so, and the boy is returned unharmed as promised.

At this point, just when the story seems to have ended, the focus suddenly shifts to the police investigation, examining in meticulous detail how the chief inspector (Nakadai Tatsuya) conducts the case. The police track every possible lead, follow clues from the boy’s memory of events, examine public phone booths in the area and more, which we are shown in numerous meetings, police outings and studies of the evidence. Slowly but surely they close in on the suspect. Even after identifying him, they want to make sure they have sufficient grounds to arrest him. They plant misleading information in the newspaper to lure him to action, then follow him closely to catch him red-handed. That hour-long process, fascinating though it is, has nothing to do with the main theme of the kidnapping and its motive. It’s just a police drama at that point, if an exceptionally well crafted one. It certainly gave insight into the actual sweaty nitty-gritty of police work.

The kidnapper is eventually caught and jailed, and is put face to face with the industrialist. Asked his motive for the crime, he says the view of the industrialist’s luxurious home on the hill overlooking the city was unbearable from the depths of his miserable existence in the slums. The industrialist, having risen from poverty himself, asks him calmly why they have to hate each other. The man, perceiving his entire mission of humiliation to have failed, is taken away screaming.

In a final scene, with the money never recovered, the industrialist’s possessions are being taken away as he spends his final days in his old home. He says he has found work at a new shoe company that he will build from scratch to rival his old firm, showing a determination to move forward.

More than in the earlier detective story Stray Dog, rich and poor have completely separate existences here, symbolized by the shining, highly visible house on the hill that seems to be mocking those in the lower depths. The kidnapper, who can see the home from his window, refers to it as “heaven”, making me wonder why they didn’t retain the far superior Japanese title “Heaven and Hell”. At the same time, the industrialist, while brusque, is also shown as an honorable man who is willing to sacrifice profit for quality. He himself grew up poor; at one point, he plops on the floor to sew the police’s tracking devices into the suitcases, noting that shoemakers also dealt with bags in the old days. This is not the usual portrayal of the rich capitalist. At the same time, while the portrait of the kidnapper is not exactly sympathetic, his motives are made clear in the form of the constant reminder of the great wealth abutting the slums and thus a reminder as well of his poverty.

Again as in the earlier film, Kurosawa features a long (nearly 10-minute) wordless sequence in a hellish setting, this time a loud dance club with foreigners of various races (presumably American soldiers) and a drug-infested den filled with junkies on the edge of insanity or death. It is a psychedelic scene where the undercover police are following the kidnapper though loud music, flashing lights and shadow. We come to learn that he is seeking a victim to try out a pure heroin that he needs to murder certain witnesses. Backed by amazing cinematography and lighting, the scene does not feel its length.

The explosive Mifune and cool Nakadai give master classes in acting. A young Yamazaki Tsutomu is very fine as the kidnapper, and Sada Yutaka was well cast as the chauffeur. The industrialist’s rivals in the firm are a bit too stereotypically slimy; I wish Kurosawa had dialed back a bit in that case. Kagawa Kyoko and Shimura Takashi are luxury casting in lesser roles.

The disjointed nature of the film does succeed in maintaining the tension as far as finding the villain, but it essentially puts the more pointed question of good and bad (the industrialist’s dilemma, the kidnapper’s motive, our responsibility for each other) on pause for an hour while the police do their thing. Stray Dog was more unified in that sense. Still, I enjoyed the film tremendously, and that counts for something too.