High and Low

Criterion Spine #24 “Were you really so unfortunate?” “I don't know. I'm not interested in self-analysis. I do know my room was so cold in winter and so hot in summer I couldn't sleep. Your house looked like heaven, high up there. That's how I began to hate you. You think I'm shaking out of fear, but I'm not! It's just the physiological reaction from being in solitary too long. Just leaving the cell makes me shake. I'm not afraid of death. I don't care if I go to hell. My life has been hell since the day I was born. But if I had to go to heaven, then I'd really start to tremble.” I so whole heartedly love this film. The best pacing I have ever experienced it feels so long but every second is engaging it was so perfect for me. The shots, movement, coordination, characters, themes, representation, cinematography, set design, I have nothing to complain about with this possibly the best I’ve seen yet. There’s such a strong irony here and the wordplay is so elegiac attached to the performances throughout, especially the finale was so fucking good his whole character is just deteriorating before us. Kurosawa does the greatest job at toying with moral compass and at the end It sort of made me think did the wealth even matter as he’s still doing what he wanted from the very beginning and what really changed? Ginjiro on the other side of the fence, he was doomed from the start with his mentality; that was the true inferiority. There couldn’t have been a better title for this.