‘Highest 2 Lowest’s’ Spike Lee On Kurosawa And Kismet (Interview)

Someone once said that making a movie is a miracle.

That unnamed person said it in the context of the myriad difficulties that can come with staging a film production, where one or two false steps could send a project back to development Hell. But what if we approached it from another angle? What if moviemaking were a consequence of some intangible energy wafting in the air that knocked all the right pieces into all the right places? What if at least some movies were meant to be? What if they’re blessed?

Spike Lee introduced the possibility during our wide-ranging conversation about his latest directorial feature, Highest 2 Lowest. The film, as Lee describes it, is a “reinterpretation” of High and Low, the 1963 film by revered Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, whom Lee has cited as one of his cinematic heroes. It is led by Denzel Washington, Lee’s longtime creative partner, marking their first film together in nearly two decades. With so many of those aforementioned pieces falling into place, is it possible that there was more to this film than coincidental but advantageous timing?

“I believe he wanted me to do this film,” Lee said of Highest 2 Lowest. “He wanted Denzel and I to do this film. I believe that, and people can say what they want, and I don’t give a fuck. I believe he gave us his blessing.”

Highest 2 Lowest arrives at a challenging time in the cultural zeitgeist. Hollywood is still grappling with wholesale shifts in how audiences engage art and entertainment, split between the occasional tentpole theatrical experience and the easy convenience but fleeting impact of streaming services. (Coincidentally, the film is a co-production with A24 and Apple Original Films, representing both sides of the cinematic paradigm.) Creatives are navigating this new landscape, trying not to trip over a minefield of large language models, algorithms, social media following, and press tours inundated with questions about chronically online memes. Simply put, it seems like a hot mess. If it is, who is better to help us make sense of it than Lee, a prolific filmmaker whose impact on American cinema is partially defined by his innate ability to hold up a clear-eyed mirror to his audiences?

Lee’s mirror this time around is shaped by the story of David King (Denzel Washington), the influential CEO of the record label Stackin’ Hits. Powerful as he is, David has struggled to adapt to the rapidly changing music industry, with some doubting that he still has “the best ears in the business.” Sensing that pressure, David forgoes selling Stackin’ Hits to a rival conglomerate and decides to buy back his label in a bid to reclaim control and reassert his position within an industry that dared to move beyond him. His plans are interrupted and then nearly derailed when his godson Kyle is accidentally kidnapped (David’s son Trey was the intended target). Again, David is under pressure to resolve the crisis, which threatens his attempt at a career resurgence and puts him at odds with a volatile adversary, rapper Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky).

“The script had been going around town for years, and it got sent to Denzel Washington,” Lee said of bringing Highest 2 Lowest to life. “He called me up; I don’t recognize the motherfucking number. I said, ‘Who it is?” D said, ‘Spike, it’s D. Look, I got this script; I’m gonna FedEx it to you.’ It was a 45-second phone call, and before I hung up the phone, I knew I was doing it.”

Highest 2 Lowest marks Lee and Washington’s fifth collaboration, after Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and 2006’s Inside Man. Neither had realized that it had been 19 years since they had last worked together until a journalist pointed it out to them. For them, their reunion was as if nothing had changed in the years between, even if their phone numbers had.

Of working with Washington again, Lee said, “We didn’t have to go through a reintroduction. Denzel said it best: he called me because we have love and trust, trust and love. Denzel said, ‘Spike, New York City, done! And that’s spelled in Brooklyn, ‘D-U-N.’”

While New York has long been a key player in his filmography, Highest 2 Lowest reads as an especially passionate celebration of his city, particularly Brooklyn, which Lee lovingly calls the “People’s Republic.” (My hometown borough of Queens is conspicuously absent, but Lee insists that he “has love for Queens,” acknowledging it as the city’s most diverse borough.) In setting the film in New York, he wanted it to reflect “how crazy this motherfucker is, but in a great way,” tapping into its boundless energy. That energy is best conveyed in one of the film’s most dazzling, chaotic sequences, where David must travel from Brooklyn to the Bronx to drop off Kyle’s ransom, encountering the Puerto Rican Day Parade and a Yankees-Red Sox game happening at the same time.

For Lee, the subway sequence was both the most challenging and most rewarding to shoot. He drew inspiration from William Friedkin’s 1971 neo-noir thriller The French Connection, starring the late Gene Hackman. “I saw The French Connection when I was in high school,” Lee recalled. “The chase scene starts at the Bay 50th Street station, by my high school, John Dewey High School in Coney Island. They didn’t have permits for that. Someone could’ve gotten killed, but they just went and shot it without permits. [In the film], Dean Winters is Gene Hackman. I told him, ‘In this scene, you’re Gene Hackman.’ He loved it, and people loved that scene.”

Lee also understood the challenges and scrutiny that would come from a beat-for-beat adaptation of Kurosawa’s High and Low, itself an adaptation of Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom. By setting the film in modern-day New York, he allowed himself the freedom to reinterpret Kurosawa’s work with care and respect, a critical effort given Lee’s reverence for the filmmaker. 

“Our approach was with respect and love, but we’re not Japanese,” Lee explained. “We weren’t making this film in post-war Japan in 1963. Denzel was not the great Toshiro Mifune. He wasn’t playing a shoe executive [like Mifune was]. With this one, we brought it up to today. But they both stand alone, and we had nothing but respect for Mr. Kurosawa and the family. And to get the stamp of approval from the family, we were off.”

His differentiation began with the title. Highest 2 Lowest as a title both signalled to the original and tributed his close friend and frequent collaborator, the musician Prince. (Prince often replaced words with numbers in his song and album titles, such as 1999’s Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic.) Music was also a reference point in reimagining High and Low, with Lee relating his and Washington’s approach to that of jazz musicianship, inspired by his father, bassist and composer William James Edwards Lee III.

“My father was a great jazz musician,” Lee said. “And I thought about great jazz musicians taking songs from the Great American Songbook — Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein. What did John Coltrane do? What did Miles Davis do with “My Funny Valentine”? They go on and on and on. So in my mind, Denzel and I were jazz musicians who were doing it like our jazz musicians: reinterpretation. I knew we were taking the position of bringing this great film by one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, and our approach was of jazz musicians. Denzel was Coltrane; I was Miles.”

Set in the world of hip-hop, Highest 2 Lowest uses it as the backdrop for an examination of the cultural gap between the oldest and youngest adult generations, with David King representing Baby Boomers, and Yung Felon, Trey, and Kyle representing the ascendant Gen Z. David and Yung Felon see music as their passion, but they approach its creation and its financial returns differently. Yung Felon forces David to confront the “get rich, die trying” ethos that informs Yung Felon’s choices and whether they are compatible. It would be easy to graft David’s reckoning in the film onto Lee, with the filmmaker grappling with how the creative landscape has been shaped (or warped) by forces that are maturing alongside Gen Z: TikTok, generative AI, streaming services, and social media influencers. With these forces commanding more influence, what does Lee make of the gap?

“There’s always been a generation gap,” Lee answered. “I think that technology has bridged that gap because everybody’s getting everything at the same time. I’m grateful that a lot of young heads have seen my films, these joints that came out before they were born. Generation after generation is seeing the films. So I don’t think there’s a bigger gap.”

The exchange of ideas and cultures is not one-directional, at least not for Lee. He found several of his collaborators in Highest 2 Lowest by scrolling through Instagram, including Aiyana-Lee, who plays budding musician Sula, and also wrote the film’s title track. 

“Back in the day, artists had to move to New York and LA,” Lee said. “Nowadays, you can put yourself on Instagram, and that’s one of the good things about technology.”

Amidst the evolving conversation about technology’s myriad positive and negative impacts, it is compelling to consider it as a conduit for kismet. (It turns out that Lee found my review on Instagram as well, which led to our conversation.) Still, it’s doubtful that technology-driven fate can overwhelm the power of what ultimately drove Highest 2 Lowest into existence: Lee and Washington’s decades-long connection, grounded in love, trust, and talent. But even that inevitability sits beneath an even higher power. I asked Lee if his film was a reflection of the freedom he appeared to have to create the work he wanted, without interference or intrusion from others’ expectations. 

Lee answered by pointing to a framed picture of Akira Kurosawa behind him. “You want to know what the answer is? This guy right here, Kurosawa.” Essentially, Kurosawa’s spiritual blessing of Lee’s reinterpretation not only reunited Lee with his greatest creative muse but also granted him a new level of artistic freedom.

That sounds quite miraculous.

Highest 2 Lowest is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of A24. The film will premiere on Apple TV+ on September 5th.