This is the last "Left of the Movies" podcast to appear on the Lost in the Movies feed - when this series resumes in October, it will have its own feed. (Previous episodes include Medium Cool, Sorry to Bother You, High-Rise, and the climactic class violence of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, The Irishman, and Parasite. On this episode I discuss the Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, which depicts class stratification via a kidnapping thriller set in a spacious high-rise apartment and the sprawling city below. At first tightly-wound around a specific location and playing in what feels like real time, the movie defied both my memory and expectations. A later influence on Ransom, the first R-rated film I ever saw (which I'm surprised I didn't mention in the review - I thought I had), High and Low dedicates itself to a shifting point of view which entertains us yet subtly undercuts our identification. What is achieved at the film's end, for all of the various characters? Is High and Low as clear-cut a morality play as it may initially appear, or are the police chasing a shallow victory at real, dangerous cost? In the surrounding intro and outro, I offer some thoughts on the current context: inequality, housing, and other denied, dangled, and threatened benefits for those who often shouldered the greatest burdens of the pandemic.
