"When the sail-shaped Olympia went up in 2022, neighbors fumed. The 33-story tower of curving, mirrored glass stuck out from the rest of art-adjacent, warehouse-loft Dumbo, blocking views and offending sensibilities. People called it a "villain's lair" and an "icon of extravagance." A four-bedroom penthouse was asking $19.5 million - a borough record at the time."
"That reputation made it a perfect fit for Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest, which opens with a montage of the Olympia's exteriors at sunrise while "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'" from Oklahoma! plays, then zooms to a penthouse balcony. Denzel Washington as David King, a music-mogul workaholic, attempting to wrest back creative control of his label, is pacing outside while taking a call, and a quick-paced police procedural unfolds from there."
"The film is based on the 1963 Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, which centers on an executive whose sleek, modern home at the top of a bluff in Yokohama is such a contrast to the slums below that its architecture motivates the film's central crime. ("As I looked at it, I gradually started to hate you," that film's antagonist confesses.) Lee is less overt, but the building does play a key role in the crime."
The sail-shaped Olympia tower provoked neighborhood backlash for clashing with Dumbo's warehouse-loft character and blocked views; a four-bedroom penthouse reached a borough-record asking price. The building serves as a visual and thematic symbol in Highest 2 Lowest, opening with sunrise shots of the Olympia and a penthouse sequence that frames a music-mogul protagonist and a rapid police procedural. The film adapts themes from Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, where architectural contrast drives the central crime, and production design choices reshaped interiors and skyline imagery to reinforce class tension and narrative logic.
Read at Curbed
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