Last summer, I watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing for the first time. I loved the film immediately. The energy of Lee’s direction oozed out from every frame. My excitement was high going into his latest, Highest 2 Lowest, but for a while, I was a little confused.
I wasn’t the only one一the film garnered a rather muted response, seemingly coming and going without much of an impact. For a while, I was worried that Lee had lost his touch, but quickly realised that he’s pulling off a masterful gambit here. He’s made a personal film disguised as an adaptation, using the film form itself to mirror his protagonists’ journey in an almost metafictional way.
An adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest reunites Lee with Denzel Washington, the fifth film in their long collaboration, dating back to 1990’s Mo’ Better Blues and the first since Inside Man in 2006. Washington plays David King, a music executive on the cusp of selling the controlling stake in Stackin’ Hits Records, the record company he had built since his youth.
David King, a Man Adrift
We first meet him ensconced in his DUMBO penthouse, formulating a last-minute plan to gather together enough money to buy back the company to try and return it to its, and his, former glory. He describes the looming sale of Stackin’ Hits Records as abandoning the very thing that he took his entire adult life trying to build, but Pam, his wife, isn’t so sure.
She reminds him of how he’d walk across the bridge to her apartment listening to new artists when they first started dating, showing up late but so excited from the new discoveries he was making. His million-dollar ears, the recognition of talent that used to be the core of his passion and his art, seem to have taken a backseat as he’s become financially successful. As he goes about his day taking meetings and attempting to set up this deal, we see that artists are now ambushing him in the lobby, trying to get heard. His son, Trey, also sends him songs by new artists that he consistently fails to listen to.
It’s not hard to see that this deal is a Hail Mary from a man who feels adrift from his purpose.
Lee and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoot the cityscape from the Kings’ windows with such wide lenses that the edge of the frame almost seems to be decaying, folding away in real time. The digital cinematography is suffocating, reflecting how David’s high-flying life has distanced him from the driving force of his creativity.
The Lifelessness and Insufficiency of Images
Additionally, Lee punctuates the scenes in the King family home with shots of the art and framed photos on the walls. Most of these are taken directly from Spike Lee’s personal collection. They represent David’s titanic taste, and are by Black artists, and many are of Black luminaries. However, by cutting to the paintings at the start of a scene, and lingering on them briefly before cutting to the action, they become associated with a certain stasis. They contribute to the suffocating nature of the penthouse, artworks that carry such heavy legacies, just like the one David is labouring under.
Before the deal can happen, however, David gets news that his son, Trey, has been kidnapped. Though he is initially willing to pay the ransom, we quickly learn that the kidnapper has taken Trey’s best friend, Kyle, by mistake. Enter: moral dilemma.
When the police first show up to their penthouse after the kidnapping, Pam clears the dining room for them to set up home base, and there’s a shot of her gathering up family photos, as she’s dwarfed by a looming Basquiat. The camera treats it with reverence, panning down from it as the orchestral score swells, but Pam herself pays it no mind. Her concern is the family photos with Trey that represent their memories, though they are obviously insufficient given the context. A literally towering work of art, ignored for matters of the heart.
More generally, David’s interior design deliberately positions him within a lineage of greatness. He is surrounded by framed photographs of James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and Aretha Franklin in his office, and he asks them how he should resolve his moral dilemma. He then grabs a framed magazine cover of himself from his youth and holds a photo of his son over it, beseeching them to talk to each other. They can’t speak, of course. Once again, he has to break free of his overattachment to the lifeless static image and make a decision for himself.
Bait-and-Switch, Lee-as-David
And break free he does. David’s decision to take action is when the film shifts into the next gear. Lee shoots Detective Bridges straight-on as he’s explaining the plan, a direct address to the audience. The “safe” and traditional orchestral score gives way to a lively piano score, and Bridges declares that it’s showtime.
As they do their final preparations, David, Pam, and Trey are blocked in a way that approximates the figures in Frederick J Brown’s painting Billie, Lester, Fats, and Duke behind them. There’s a syncing between the artwork and David’s actions, the static images now representing the beginning of something and not the end. Toni Morrison watches over his shoulder as he heads into the city一for the first time, perhaps, David is living up to the old masters.
This is where Lee shows his hand: He has lulled us into complacency in the first third of the film, the lifelessness of the editing and blocking seemingly evidence of an artist past his prime, coasting on his own past genius. Yet, once David descends from his throne and into the city, there is a noticeable change in the cinematography. Film and Super 8 footage are woven into the movie, and it feels like it’s been given a shot of adrenaline. This includes an extended Puerto Rico Day parade during the handoff/chase sequence. It’s by far the most colourful sequence of the film, and crackles with the energy of the city. The Kings, and the film by extension, are so far removed from the ordinary people on the ground. Lee forces us to acknowledge them, to bathe in their liveliness and joy. That the plan gets waylaid by a group of rowdy Yankees fans is a reminder that you can only isolate yourself for so long in your hall of mirrors and frames.
Lee is playing the long game here, having set a trap for the audience the same way David intends to do for the kidnapper. David is revealed to be an avatar for Lee, and in allowing David to plunge into the thick of the action himself, Lee beats back his doubters and proves himself to still be the dynamic filmmaker we remember him to be.
After Kyle is safely recovered, we get a quick succession of shots as a transition: for the first time in the film, we see a series of artworks. We first see a photograph of a fist, then a drawing of an upturned arm, fist still clenched, then we see a photograph of Muhammad Ali looking down, almost like a primitive flipbook. David is finally (re-)becoming a man of action, and the static artworks that have represented his stasis are becoming a moving image.
(No) Exit
A flipbook is not a film, however. There is still more to be done. Frustrated by the police’s speed, David takes matters into his own hands, personally tracking down the kidnapper, an aspiring rapper who kept trying and failing to get his attention. The rapper’s studio is deep in the basement of an apartment building, and as David weaves through dingy hallways, we see multiple “EXIT”s stenciled into the walls.
His arc is complete一for the first time in a long time, he is actively seeking an artist out, and he will not be held back by the insufficiency of the static image, flouting the exit signs and chasing Yung Felon out of his studio and onto an empty train.
This culminates in one final confrontation between David and the rapper, Yung Felon. In jail and facing multiple charges, Yung Felon offers to sign with Stackin’ Hits to turn his newfound notoriety into a lucrative deal for both parties. Yung Felon now represents the lure of money and fame, while David is trying to stick to his principles. Lee intervenes once again in the film form, fracturing the frame, positioning the two characters in a split-screen opposite each other. They are face-to-face, but instead of shooting them side-on, the two frames are shot at an angle, such that the glass between them hinges out between them. The edges of the frame are no longer decaying, instead thrumming with a new focus.
As Yung Felon tries to pitch David on his idea, the camera zooms in such that any division between the two frames disappears. Just as it seems like they might come to some sort of agreement, Lee cuts out of that shot set-up and goes to a front-on shot, the actors talking and looking right at us. The glass between them has become the cinema screen. When David finally turns down his offer, Yung Felon spits on the glass, the allure of money revealing the insufficiency, the falsity of the screen, of the image.
In the final scene, the Kings are auditioning a new artist, recommended by Trey, in their home. Her name is Sula Janie Zimmie, and as she explains the literary genesis of the name, we cut to framed copies of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston books. Those are towering works of literature, but their lineage only continues in people like Sula. As she starts singing, accompanied only by a piano, the production kicks in non-diegetically, and it’s almost like David can hear it too. David and Lee dance across the boundaries of the film form, and as David says, “Let’s get to work,” it’s also Spike Lee reassuring us that he will continue to make vital, electric cinema, and I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.
About the Author:
An avid consumer of all kinds of art, and an occasional dabbler in creating said art, Fengyu enjoys writing about film as a way to express their love of the medium through close attention. Having graduated last year from Brown University after double majoring in Film and Political Science, they are based in Singapore for the time being, attempting to find a way to balance their twin passions. You should bug them on Letterboxd at @fengyu33.