High and Low

High and Low is a 1963 movie by Akira Kurosawa which I saw a few days ago. It's a modern police procedural, with the rather cliched plot of a kidnapper who taunts the father of his victim by phone and seems to have uncanny abilities to see what his target is doing. (Actually, perhaps it wasn't cliched in 1963.)

Except that the target of the extortion demand, played by Toshiro Mifune, isn't actually the father of the victim. The kidnapper has accidentally snatched the chauffeur's son instead. This sets up the fundamental moral conflict of the film. Will Mifune's character, a prosperous shoe manufacturer named about to clinch an important deal that will give him control of the company he works for, give up his professional ambitions by paying the massive ransom demanded by the kidnapper and thus plunge himself into debt. (Mifune has mortgaged everything he owns in order to raise the money for the buyout that will give him control of the company, and this is the money he would need to use to pay the kidnapper.) This makes the film more than just a taut procedural--though it is certainly that.

The moral challenge Mifune faces is presented in heavy-handed terms right after the kidnapping, when he thinks his son has been taken and declares, without hesitation, that of course he will pay whatever it takes to get him back. But Mifune's character is not cold-hearted or unsympathetic. He has worked his way to the position he has, although we find out eventually that he also owes a good deal of his status to his wife's inherited money. At the beginning of the movie, he is confronting the directors of the company over their desire to make shoddy, flashy shoes instead of the solid work he wants to turn out. Kurosawa first gives us a conflict between good and bad capitalism, and then casts doubt even on the "good capitalism."

The title of the film in Japanese, apparently, translates more literally as "Heaven and hell." It turns out that the kidnapper is motivated primarily by envy of Mifune's literally exalted status in a beautiful house on a hill overlooking Yokohama. Mifune hasn't done anything to hurt the kidnapper, and the latter's rage seems irrational, but Kurosawa makes us empathize with him in spite of our horror at his actions.

It may be relevant that in Buddhism, unlike Christianity, heaven and hell are temporary destinations. Gods, who live in heaven, are beings who have achieved happiness through their good actions in previous lives, just as Mifune has worked his way from a simple craftsman to a position of wealth and privilege. But in Buddhism, being a "god" is not a particularly desirable thing. The gods are typically unaware of the temporary nature of their bliss. Eventually they too will have to descend from the heights. Enlightenment results not simply from good actions, but from an awareness of the temporary, contingent nature of all reality, even apparently secure bliss. In Mahayana Buddhism, the spiritual ideal is the "bodhisattva," who takes a vow not to enter Nirvana until every other creature in the universe has been enlightened as well. At the end of the movie, having lost his fortune but gained a position with a smaller company where he can do the kind of work he wants to do, Mifune visits the kidnapper in prison. While the film ends on a somber note with the kidnapper's howls of rage and despair, Mifune's trajectory is a redemptive one for himself at least, from arrogant assumption of superiority to compassionate presence with someone who has done him (and others) great evil.