Prince is one of the best DVD commentators around, for he sticks on point, and while manifestly scripted, his asides are so pointed and focused upon the scenes that it does not matter, for he never sounds wooden and robotic, as many commentators are. The film’s soundtrack, by Masaru Satô, is spare, and rarely used, although Prince does digress upon it. This is a film far more dependent upon the narrative and visuals. Kurosawa’s only regular musical cues come whenever the police have minor victories.
Overall, High And Low is a great film, whose Americanized title — like Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri Di Biciclette, whose title has historically been mistranslated as The Bicycle Thief rather than Bicycle Thieves -- is a fortuitous gaffe, for the ‘wrong’ translated title is far more evocative and less strident than its literal translation. The film’s exploration and criticisms of social aspects of times and places past is timeless and the film shows how a great artist can mine true cosmic depth out of the must mundane of propositions that lesser artists make hackwork out of, such as Reiko’s banal query: "What good is success if you lose your humanity?"
The real tragedy of this film is not what occurs within its frame, but that even such banalities are not asked today in the modern world of filmmaking, much less extrapolated upon in such a proud and grand way. Akira Kurosawa was a giant of cinema, and world art, in general; a man whose output will be seen, centuries hence, the way Shakespeare’s and Goya’s are today, but that gigantism was built upon and borne by the desire to explore even the minutest moments of the human condition; not in a weepy, bleeding heart liberal sort of way, but in a deep, penetrating way that celebrated the best part of the human being: his intellect.
In today’s dumbed down, politically correct society, such films are not only not made, but not even contemplated. When the history of turn of the millennium cinema is finally written, one of the key questions asked will be what happened to the basic striving for high art? Why did it become gauche to want to excel, and to want to treat an audience with respect? Of course, the film asks these same sorts of queries (along with the more banal ones it subverts) in regards to its lead character’s professions, which only shows how great art recapitulates itself again and again, regardless of the changing circumstances of history, while bad art is entombed by its stolidity. Great artists know this, and, while glaring at his own reflection, at film’s end, one senses a more peaceable Kingo Gondo knows it, too. Or, at least we hope he does. That we do says as much of Kurosawa as it does of us and our newer times.
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