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High and Low
天国と地獄
1963 · Film · 142 min
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
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3 comments on Hacker News
"samurai" movies:
- Seven Samurai
- Rashomon
- Ran
- Throne of Blood
- Kagemusha
non-samurai:
- High and Low
- Ikiru
I would say that the essentials are Seven Samurai, High and Low, Rashomon.
Reading this, it's hard for me to imagine a time when Japan would have been, pardon the phrase, a backward country where "automobile and motorcycle engine repairs were done on dirty floors".
When I visited Korea a decade or so ago, I saw a lot of tiny scooter/motorcycle repair shops that might have resembled the description above. (Lots of janky scooters too that appeared to have a lot more miles on them than their manufacturers intended). I imagined that perhaps Korea is where Japan was some decades prior.
While watching the Kurosawa film High and Low (1963) I thought I could sense a little more of the scrappiness of that earlier Japan.
There's a whole bunch of his films I'd put squarely in my all-time list. Ikiru, Ran, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, High and Low, Dersu Uzala, Rashomon. It's one masterpiece after another. Try watching Seven Samurai and Ikiru back to back to really appreciate the genius of Takeshi Shimura as an actor.