THE HERO WITHIN US ALLThe Washington Post wrote that “Highand Low is, in a way, the companionpiece to Throne of Blood – it’s Macbeth,if Macbeth had married better. Themovie shares the rigors of Shakespeare’sconstruction, the symbolic and historicalsweep, the pacing that makes the storyexpand organically in the mind”.events presenting his protagonists with a range of choices. Thisrange of choice signified the space of their freedom and, in thetype of response chosen, symbolized the future course of nationaldevelop ment. In short, Kurosawa’s was an unabashedly didacticcinema that, in its union of ethics and aesthetics, attemptedto use art as a mode of instruction. Zeami had proclaimed thathis Noh theater would “serve to praise the Buddha and providethe means to spread his teachings, will chase away evil affinities,and will call forth happiness, so that the country will remain intranquillity, bringing gentleness and long life to the people.Kurosawa’s cinema belongs to such a practice, whereinart is treated as the vehicle of enlightenment. He relates anincident during the filming of Hnshomon when, at the completionof location shooting at the Kornyoji temple forest, theabbot of the temple gave him a folding fan as a gift in tributeto the crew’s hard work. On the fan were inscribed the words“Benefit All Mankind.” Kurosawa says, “I was left speechless.”In carrying out such a task, the works of the immediate postwarera belong to the heroic mode of Kurosawa’s cinema. Thischapter is concerned with the structure of that mode andits gradual articulation, the contradictions that articulationentailed, and its culmination in Kurosawa’s first masterpiece,Ikiru. All these works are attempts to construct a cinemaconnected to its topical moment. Even the weakest films ofthis period-One Wonderful Sunday (1947), The Quiet Duel(1949), and Scandal are all interpenetrated by the exigenciesof wartime collapse and the emergence of a new Japan.By contrast with the other, tumultuous works of this era, thesethree films have a placid surface that is marked by a generalabsence of radical formal experimentation. One WonderfulSunday chronicles the alternately whimsical and despairingadventures of two lovers as they wander through the city, pittingtheir fantasies against the disturbing presence of war orphansand ruined buildings. Buffeted by misfortune, the young womancries out that she would die without her dreams. The couplebecomes depressed by their poverty and the ruined surroundings,but their spirits are rescued by an imaginary symphony(Schubert’s Unfinished) that the young man conjures in an empty26 EXCERPT: WILLPOWER CURES ALL HUMAN AILMENTS
THE HERO WITHIN US ALLHigh and Low (1963) An executive of a shoe company becomes a victim ofextortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped and held for ransom.EXCERPT: WILLPOWER CURES ALL HUMAN AILMENTS27
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