people who have power often face particularly intense ethical dilemas in a kir kurasawa high and low toir mufi plays Mr gondo a Japanese business executive who's confident in his ability to do the right thing but then something happens that forces this man to Grapple with his deepest beliefs and try to figure out what his basic values really are the extraordinary thing about high and low though is that it doesn't just focus this on one man's drama it's the story of a whole society in a state of ethical crisis Akira kurasawa and toshiro mauni made up one of the great actor director pairings in all of Cinema they're mostly best known still for the samurai epics in which Muni very often played a strong willed individual clashing with the strictures and customs of feudal society in high he does the same thing but in modern dress the first half of high and low has some of the same feeling of formality and and theatricality that you find in those costume dramas gondo is in the middle of the most important business deal of his career when he receives a phone call with word that his son has been kidnapped should he pay the ransom it's not a very difficult call but then the son walks back in and we discover that it was gondo chauffeur's child who was kidnapped so gondo must decide how much is he willing to sacrifice to save the life of another man's child this is pretty potent dramatic stuff but it's just the beginning gonda's decision sets in motion a vast police investigation but it also enables curasawa to execute an astonishingly bold dramatic turn the first hour of the movie takes place on a a single set it's unbelievably claustrophobic but then halfway through the movie opens up we're outside and yet we're subject to a new and just as terrifying anxiety in Japanese this film's title is closer to heaven and hell but the English title high and low works pretty well too with caa's themes it's a movie about wealth and poverty hope and despair Good and Evil but the relationship between these things in the movie and also in life is not as simple as we might like to [Applause] think gondo decision gets people working together in a way that they hadn't before and in this process the movie discovers a power beyond wealth or political influence