Special Exhibit: HIGH AND LOW (Tengoku to Jigoku)

Year: 1963

Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Where to Watch: The Criterion Channel, Amazon Prime

Seven Samurai is a blast of a classic, quite possibly the most influencial Japanese film in western culture. Rashomon is a narrative landmark. The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo inspired, to diferent degrees, Star Wars and A Fistful of Dollars. Ran and Throne of Blood were Shakespearean visual threats. Dreams was a love letter from the filmmaker to his pupils and the other way around.

But if you ask me what my favorite film by Akira Kurosawa is, at least at this point in my life, I will tell you it's High and Low (sometimes known as Heaven and Hell), which might not be as well-known among casual audiences as some others, but which I find borderline perfect. At any rate, it's yet another masterpiece by the Asian filmmaker that remains a bit underrated.

The film stars legendary Toshiro Mifune (from, well... most of the films I mentioned in the opening paragraph) as a family man and hard worker who had made his way to the top. After humble origins, he is now rich and one of the major executives at his company. He lives with his wife and young son in a large dream house where most of the early part of the movie will take place.

The thrilling first act offers a moralistic play, which I'll have to spoil just a little bit in order for this recommendation to work: Instead of receiving the business call he has been waiting for, the executive is telephoned by a man who claims to have kidnapped his son and demands a large ransom. Except, as it's shortly discovered, the abductor has made a mistake and has kidnapped the chauffeur's son instead of the proper boy. Will the rich man still be willing to give up the financial future of his family to save a child that is not his own?

The film has been retitled in at least one international market into Anatomy of an Abduction, and it's easy to see why. High and Low offers a full study of the crime: the discovery, the negotiation, the rescue attempt, the manhunt and even a confrontation at prison between victim and perpetrator that serves as a coda and illustrates the film's social commentary. What's even more interesting, the inusual structure allows for a change of main characters in each section of the film, and tough Mifune remains the central one, he's absent for a large portion of the picture as it focuses on the investigators or, at times, the kidnapper himself.

Each section is uniquely directed, with the highlight being, for those so inclined, the previously noted negotiation sequence. Filmed basically in real time, and contained in the carefully designed hall of the executive's home, this piece remains a masterclass of blocking**

**Because I know not every reader has to be well-versed in terminology, here's a piece of educational content: In cinema, BLOCKING reffers to the staging of each scene's movements inside the space. While in theater, where the word is also used, this is limited to the actor's staging, film also needs to account for the camera's movements (and in many cases, that of other technical equipment and crew). While the blocking of a scene might seem like something simple that barely registers to the untrained viewer's eye, it is in reality one of the main artistic decisions taken during filming, and it can constitue a very complex "dance" between the performers and the camera, so that it results into impeccable framing.

A detailed, dramatic, and intelligent crime thriller which might not be the kind of film you first think of when discussing Kurosawa, but without which your appreciation of the great Japanese Master would be incomplete.