COMM 380:  Media Criticism

 

The crime genre is a deceptively complex and varied genre of television and film. Some works within this genre may choose to focus on the criminals themselves and detail specifically how they commit a crime. For example, the film Ocean’s Eleven tells the story of a casino heist, from its conception to its planning, and through to its execution (Soderbergh, 2001). Other films and shows may choose to focus on the police and attempt to accurately illustrate how an investigation is handled in a subgenre called the police procedural. Still other works may focus on the victims of crimes and their actions in response to those crimes. But Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low instead chooses to blend all of these focuses in a single work, doing so with considerable aplomb. Because it so masterfully balances so many elements of the crime genre, it can safely be considered something of a quintessential entry in the crime genre.

 

At its outset, High and Low is about a man who faces a difficult and complicated quandary because of a crime. Kingo Gondo (played by Toshiro Mifune), an executive at National Shoes, is about to be forced out of the company by his fellow executives because he refuses to compromise the quality of their shoes to increase profits. In response to this, Gondo secretly plans to buy a majority stake of stock in order to protect his position and retain the high standard of quality he desires. To obtain the money in order to carry out his plan, Gondo mortgages his family’s entire estate. It is just before Gondo sends the final check to complete his buyout that he receives a phone call from a man claiming to have kidnapped his son and demanding thirty million yen in ransom. His son runs in from outside moments later, but the boy he was playing with, the son of Gondo’s chauffeur, is missing instead. The kidnapper later calls again and insists that Gondo pay the ransom anyway. Gondo must now choose between the life of his chauffeur’s son and a life of destitution for himself and his family.

 

For roughly the first fifty minutes of the film, the focus is on Gondo and his response to the situation. He feels pressure from his wife to pay the ransom, and pressure from his assistant to complete the buyout. A lesser film would have painted Gondo as a heartless rich elite who cares more about money than human life, but the situation is not so black and white, and High and Low makes sure the audience understands this. Mifune’s performance is particularly effective in achieving this aim. His inner torment at having to make such a decision is profoundly apparent as he paces nervously and opens and closes drapes as he ponders restlessly, all the time wearing a genuinely weary and tortured expression. And this refusal to water things down into simple concepts and false dichotomies becomes something of a theme for High and Low overall, especially in comparison to other films and shows in the crime genre.

 

Gondo does at last make a decision nearly an hour into the film (an hour that not for a single moment seems to drag), and at this point, the focus of the film switches to the actions and methods of the policemen as they try to locate and apprehend the kidnapper. The police procedural portion of the film thus ensues. And if the point of a police procedural is to precisely demonstrate what a legitimate police investigation looks like, warts and all, and still make it compelling, then you’d be hard pressed to find a police procedural superior to High and Low.  There is a sequence in this film around fifteen minutes long where the investigating officers trying to track down the kidnapper all one by one describe the evidence they’ve compiled.  All at once, it feels completely authentic and yet is entirely gripping from the scene’s opening to its (downright climactic) close.

 

During one of the police’s surveys of the area around Gondo’s home, the kidnapper is unmasked, and from that point forward, the film switches constantly between the police’s efforts and tactics in seizing the kidnapper and his response to their actions. In the climax of the film, the actions of the police and those of the kidnapper at last collide in an extended sequence where the police discreetly trail the kidnapper around a harbor trying to catch him committing a particular act.

 

At first, I was at a bit of a loss when trying to assess why I enjoyed this film so much more than many of the other films and shows in the crime genre. Then I took into consideration the modern state of the crime genre. On television, the crime genre is largely represented by police procedural shows like C.S.I., The Mentalist, or other procedurals like Person of Interest. The shortcomings of the television medium itself in comparison to full length feature films (runtime, commercials) is certainly a factor, but what I’d say is a larger issue is the overall homogeneity of crime shows. They’re all structured too similarly for their own good. But there is an easily understandable reason for this. C.S.I. was the world’s most watched show in five of seven years from 2005-2012 (Bibel, 2012). It’s natural for networks to try and emulate that

success by creating similar shows in the same genre.

 

Genre theory is advantageous here for a few reasons. For one, the police procedural sub-genre gives television producers a basic blueprint to create a new show from. Secondly, knowledge of the police procedural genre and its associated themes and tendencies helps television watchers recognize what shows will best fit their interests and provide them gratification. And thirdly, the audience’s aforementioned familiarity with genre themes makes it easier for networks to advertise new shows, since by using a familiar genre, some elements of the show are already understood by the audience even before seeing an episode. The downside to this method of producing television content is that there comes to be a glut of similar shows, and the bubble bursts, since without new experiences, audiences will not be attracted.

 

To combat this malaise, many TV procedurals will have a gimmick to attract viewers. For The Mentalist, it is protagonist Patrick Jane’s super keen observational skills that make him seem psychic (Heller, 2008), and for Person of Interest, it is the computer that can predict crimes so the protagonists can try to stop them before they occur (Nolan, 2011). The problem with this approach to producing procedurals, in particular police procedurals, is that they cease to accurately display real police work, instead opting for a somewhat augmented version of reality.  Even in C.S.I., the magical “zoom and enhance” feature on their computers has helped bring a lot more than one case to the obligatory happy ending before the forty-two minute threshold

(Bruckheimer, 2000). To me, there is no excitement in a story where, because of a strict adherence to a formula, the ending is nearly always known from the beginning (they get the bad guy and have a nice slow motion montage at the end). Especially when the characters within these stories possess or are in possession of superhuman methods of tracking down criminals, the route to the inevitable capture of the bad guy becomes more and more of a meaningless formality than a well written sequence of events concluding in a satisfying and hard earned climax with the criminal.

 

The crime genre in film faces a slightly different situation. There are very few procedurally styled crime films anymore; instead most films dealing with crime either do so from the perspective of the people committing the crime (Now You See Me, The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy) or from the perspective of over the top, cartoonishly superhuman protagonists (Taken, the Die Hard franchise, 2 Guns, the Transporter franchise). The latter of these two categories really doesn’t even fall into the crime genre anymore; they are more akin to action thrillers involving crimes. However, I can’t hold against them the fact that they don’t stay true to reality. They are not procedurals, nor ever claim anything close to it, so they aren’t obligated to adhere to realistic concepts. However, I can fault them for over simplifying their characters and concepts. Take Taken, for example. Liam Neeson is the “good guy”. The human traffickers are the “bad guys”. He can kill dozens of them not only because he is essentially Batman, but also because in this over simplified reality, it’s perfectly acceptable to dispatch other humans if they are “bad guys”. It’s this childish logic that prevents me from investing in these films. Without the constraints of morality or normal human endurance, what connection do I have to any of the characters or events portrayed on screen? There is nothing beyond these films than simple amusement.

 

But High and Low has delivered everything I could possibly demand from a crime film. It offers a reality where decisions have genuine weight, and thus real drama can take place. It shows us real police methods and the struggle and hardship it takes to locate a criminal. And perhaps most importantly, it gives us characters that are neither “good guys” nor “bad guys”. In the final scene of the film, Gondo comes to the prison where the kidnapper awaits a hanging at the kidnapper’s behest. The kidnapper tries to validate his actions throughout the film (which extend to much more than simple kidnapping by the end) by insisting in the injustice that Gondo should have so much while he had so little, and that the two ought to hate each other. Gondo’s responses throughout the conversation seem to discredit the kidnapper’s reasoning, but the

kidnapper remains defiant, even stating that he hopes he goes to hell when he hangs. After a silence, though, the kidnapper leaps out of his seat and begins to grasp desperately at the grate that separates him and Gondo, betraying the fact that perhaps he realizes his crimes weren’t worth committing. It causes the audience to feel a degree of pity for him; that his confused notions caused so much pain, even for himself. He’s not simply the “bad guy”, or a caricature of a human being, but a real person.

 

Kurosawa’s dedication to realistic characters and circumstances can be seen elsewhere too.  When the police tail the kidnapper around a harbor, they enter a bar where white and black people (presumably U.S. soldiers and their families) can be seen dancing around a jukebox.  They are there simply because that’s what you would likely see at a bar in a Japanese harbor in 1963.

 

The roles and place of women in 1963 is similarly expressed realistically. Gondo’s wife wears a traditional kimono for most of the film, and is always expected to answer the door when it is knocked and lead guests into the room where Gondo awaits. She is always subject to her husband’s decisions; in fact, Gondo never even told her about the mortgaging of their estate in order to finance a stock buyout until just before the kidnapping takes place. That said, her portrayal is not completely submissive. She openly defies Gondo in front of guests when he initially decides that he won’t pay the ransom, and remains the most vocal supporter of paying until the final decision is made. However, this film would fail the Bechdel test easily (Hanson, 2014). Gondo’s wife is the only female character with any presence whatsoever, and after the first hour, she, like Gondo himself, nearly vanishes. High and Low briefly touches on 1963 era Japanese culture as well, and it’s clear that Japan at the time was highly influenced by modern American culture. The way the people dress, the western style houses, and the western style bars complete with jukeboxes are all indicative of this. But I get the feeling that most of the cultural elements present in the film are only novel to me because of my complete ignorance of what Japanese culture was like in 1963. I don’t think the film makes much of a statement about specifically Japanese culture that would be meaningful to Japanese audiences. It says more about the human race as a whole than about one specific culture.

 

High and Low Director Akira Kurosawa said of his favorite author Dostoevsky, “I know of no one so compassionate… ordinary people turn their eyes away from tragedy; he looks straight into it.” (Prince, 1991) In High and Low, it’s clear that Kurosawa extends that same sense compassion to his characters, especially to Gondo and the kidnapper. Most films have little compassion at all for the rich and for criminals, yet High and Low so successfully causes the audience to feel empathy for both. This compassion is a characteristic so many crime films and shows have lost due to science fiction gimmicks, augmented realities, and over simplified narratives and morality. High and Low stands as a testament to what crime films can achieve, and it makes the current state of the crime genre that much sadder.

 

 

 

References

Kurosawa, A. (Director). (2008). High and Low [Motion picture]. Japan: Toho Company.

 

Hanson, R.E. (2014). Mass Communication: Living in a Media World (4. ed). Los Angeles [u.a.: Sage [u.a.].

 

Prince, S. (1991). The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

 

Bibel, S. (2012, June 14). 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' is the Most-Watched Show in the World. TVbytheNumbers. Retrieved July 8, 2014, from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/06/14/csi-crime-scene-investigation-is-the-most- watched-show-in-the-world-2/138212/

 

Bruckheimer, J. (2000). C.S.I. [Television series]. United States: CBS.

 

Heller, B. (2008). The Mentalist [Television series]. United States: CBS.

 

Nolan, J. (2011). Person Of Interest [Television series]. United States: CBS.

 

Soderbergh, S. (Director). (2001). Ocean's eleven [Motion picture]. U.S.A.: Warner Home Video.