High and Low

Akira Kurosawa is usually remembered as a director of stately yet thrilling historical samurai pictures such as Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. In 1963 though, he adapted a pulp novel from American crime writer Ed McBain about cops and kidnappers. This was his version of those pictures and it is clear when watching that this is a director interpreting a genre as he sees fit and not adhering to the filmmaking rules that come with material like this.

The plot itself is relatively straightforward. A successful businessman, Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), on the eve of a pivotal moment in his career, becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and held to ransom. The opening act is Kingo negotiating with the kidnapper over the phone, assisted by the police. The problem is that the ransom essentially destroys his career and his family's future in the process. The central conceit of the opening act is a fascinating one. Would you do the right thing to save a life if it meant destroying your own? Gondo too is not some personification of selfish industrialism. He is torn between two families, his own and his chauffeur's. It poses a lot of food for thought when our prominent businessman is not a monster. Without giving away what happens the second half of the film is the police investigation and search for the kidnappers.

Kurosawa shoots the first act in stationary wide shots and long takes. You rarely leave Gondo's living room in the early stretch. The first act could honestly work as a one act play, and it has that visual quality to it. It makes for uncomfortable watching as you are left to ponder in realtime over Gondo's dilemma as he does. The problem is that these takes grow tiresome and rather boring. You are left with forty minutes of almost tableaux. It might be artful and have something to say, but it does not make for entertaining viewing.

It is in the second, more traditional act that the film picks up pace. A train sequence is truly gripping as police try to identify the kidnapper without having the first clue what they look like. The camerawork is handheld (hardly Bourne but you get the gist) and you are crammed into tight corridors. It is a tense set-piece that serves as the film's highlight, made all the more gripping viewing it as a contemporary audience knowing that 'secret cameras' are the size of speakers and the police are trying to hide them. It also presents us with the inner workings of a police investigation - how one man can be located inside a city as sprawling as Tokyo seems like a daunting task - but the breadcrumbs are laid out neatly and it is impressive how believable and satisfying the process is to watch.

It is a far more intimate piece of work than Kurosawa's samurai films and it is nowhere near as essential  but High and Low has enough to grip you and leave you thinking long after it finishes.

Broadchurch

This blog of mine is starting to have a recurring trend to it. I am showering praise on miniseries not from the US, that appear to revolve around the same premise. Small towns and their inhabitants being tested by the actions of a child. Top of the Lake took beautiful New Zealand scenery and used the disappearance of a girl to reveal all its occupants were virtually all evil or tolerant of it. Broadchurch does similar with the murder of a twelve year old boy but with more heart.

Broadchurch shares its DNA more with Scandanavian series like The Killing or The Bridge than the Kiwi show. It truly takes the time to focus on the bereaved family (usually reduced to a few scenes of crying and screaming, but here each member is truly examined), the lynch mob mentality of the community and the short-memory of the press, and how they all affect one another. One of the big strengths of the show is its ability for audience empathy. This show taps into the grieving process as well as our emotional response to these events. Every suspect in or out of the confession room has us thinking one thing of them and yet in mere minutes our sympathies will turn, forever certain, and then changed again.

The central thrust of the story is with the investigation and its easily recognisable mismatched cops. Olivia Colman is the local copper with a heart of gold and genuine warmth to all. We first see her returning from holiday and showering colleagues with trinket gifts, then swearing at losing her promotion. She is every bit the copper but her warmth and community spirit compromise her with every suspect coming through. David Tennant plays the more clichéd role. A big city cop haunted by previous cases and demons. Hardened to the world and its sinners, Tennant never plays him for sympathy but leaves us with something worth caring for - his conviction. It is his best work post-Who and the role that should evaporate your association of him with the Doctor. Both of the leads will no doubt gain BAFTA nods (Colman is talked about as if she has already won) but David Bradley, Jodie Whitaker and Andrew Buchan are all equally deserving.

The true hero though is creator, Chris Chibnall. The man constructed a narrative filled with red herrings but never any sense that they are deliberately there to irritate. This show is as much concerned about revealing a beach town can be as vile as any urban city as it is with giving you a true answer to the killer's identity. The jolly facade of everyone in the premier episode's tracking shot is gone come the final episode's cold reveal. Without giving anything away this is Chibnall's greatest achievement. British dramas always rush their denouements through with hearty cheers and loose ends. In Broadchurch, he has made the reveal as devastating to his community as the initial murder. The destruction this killer has left in their wake will not disappear. It never will. It is in this, its final episode that Broadchurch goes from great to exceptional programming.

Top of the Lake

It's unlikely that you've ever heard much about New Zealand TV series that are must-watches. Top of the Lake is likely the first one.

Created by Jane Campion (she of The Piano fame) and Gerard Lee, with Campion sharing directing duties with Garth Davis, Top of the Lake takes the rather familiar trope of the police procedural and uses it as the prism through which we examine a small Kiwi community and the various characters that inhabit it.

Tui, a local girl, goes missing shortly after a suicide attempt wherein she tried to drown herself in the lake of the title. She is the daughter of Matt (Peter Mullan), the local kingpin who keeps the town safe and largely employed in his empire by one means or another.  Sydney cop Robin Givens (Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss), over visiting her dying mother, is sequestered for Tui's initial interview and subsequent search party. What follows would give away what surfaces over the six hour running time but needless to say every character in an always expanding ensemble has a horrifying secret that comes out, including Robin. Adultery, rape, corruption, bribery, pedophilia and murder all feature against a backdrop of sexism and apathy. Dealing out town justice leaves further reaching scars than ever originally intended.

Campion's name is normally associated with far more art-house fare. Her work often basted in pretentiousness and dull restraint, and while Top of the Lake has the same ponderous scenery it works in the show's favour. The beauty of the landscape masking the ugliness of its inhabitants and town. The performances are universally brilliant. Moss has a good grip on the accent and her Givens is a wonderfully combative mixture of stubbornness and vulnerability. Mullan may appear to be running on his "hard-bastard" mode initially but as the show progresses it becomes apparent that he is as much a wounded father as a hardened gangster. Then there's David Wenham playing the nicest on-the-take copper you ever met, Thomas M. Wright's reformed drug dealer who lives in a tent and Holly Hunter as JG, the weirdest character you are ever likely to see in a straight crime drama.

The series is satisfyingly short. There is no sense that story information is being withheld to stretch out running time or that the creators' eyes were looking at this being a franchise. What this simply is a mystery played out with wonderful attention to detail and something to say with an absolute start and finish. Top of the Lake might not feel that different from the slew of other series dealing with similar subject matter (The Killing and Broadchurch immediately spring to mind) but it manages to stand out with a unique setting, tone and characters. It might be a town run by vicious men but it's one held up by bruised and resilient women.