the night club scene is a riot, a glittering rebirth of Drunken Angel‘s grimy bars; the drug den a terrifying dream; the conclusion a smouldering existential showdown. these scenes saved High and Low from being, for me, kurosawa’s urban Ran– an admirable but stubbornly unloveable feat. what starts as a chamber drama of passions and cinematic geometry morphs into The Battle of Algiers and then realises the potential of M.
on kurosawa’s titles for the english audience. there are the lyrical japanese gems (Ran, Rashomon, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai), the poetic sketches of human frailty (Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, I Live In Fear, The Bad Sleep Well), the glowing gothic images (Throne of Blood, Hidden Fortress, The Lower Depths). High and Low is itself a range of peaks: a tense abstraction, a trope of pulpy detective narratives, an ethical summation, a social portrait, a marlovian endgame.
it seems, as with perhaps only herzog, that every time now i watch one of his films i am left searching for someone who did it better.
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widerthanpictures 