Perfect Days
Is perfect…and my first Wim Wenders watch. Beautifully cinematographic, often wordless, it’s episodic and character-led, with wonderful music, but doesn’t meander. It could form a perfect pair with Civil War as another film about image, photography and ways of seeing. (The new Barbenheimer — Perfect Civil War?)
Celebrating the small scale, the routine, the mundane, the ordinary and everyday, it felt very like the ultimate post-Lockdown movie — a tribute to those low-paid public facing roles who kept everything running (at their own risk) during those difficult times.
Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) is a public toilet cleaner, and we follow him through his daily routine, his interactions with the people he encounters, his love of literature, his public bathing, his van music interludes, his meals, and his emotions and thoughts (mostly expressed through his face and body language).
He’s old school — enjoying music cassette tapes, real money, a more traditional human-scale Japanese way of living, global literature, a camera which needs its film processed!
There are interruptions along the way — a game of noughts and crosses develops through a hidden piece of paper; he falls in love with a cafe owner who sings beautifully; his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) literally turns up on his doorstep — bringing his estranged sister Keiko (Yumi Asō) in hot pursuit. His co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto) is feckless, distracted, hopelessly in love, hopelessly cashless, and for a time, Hirayama ends up as an unwilling accomplice in his romance with Aya (Aoi Yamada).
Though he is doing a grim job, he takes pride in creating a scrupulously clean, ordered space and in giving those using the facilities privacy as well as a pleasant and healthy space. We get to appreciate the superior toilet hygiene of Japanese public toilets — including fun ones which change colour when in use.
Not only doing we experience his highs and lows, but we join his dreams — we are, as he is, literally in the moment. We enjoy his love for trees, an appreciative wave from a lost child restored to their parent, his kind respect for someone experiencing homelessness, the baffled proto-romance with a fellow open space appreciator over their sandwich lunches. Indeed, we see his hidden pain as he hugs both his niece and his estranged sister — who urges him to visit his father, who is not as he was. As she drives off, he breaks down and we see a whole new side of him, and learn so much about forgiveness and reconciliation in a moment.
There are the wins — gaining a new assistant to take over Takashi’s shift when he quits, the free drinks from friendly food vendors , enjoying cycle rides round the city — and the losses — selling a precious cassette tape to pay for fuel, seeing the woman he loves with another man, having to cover Takashi’s shift late into the night. There’s also playfulness — his love rival tracks him down to explain things and they end up playing shadow tag.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Absorbing you in to his world, you almost don’t want it to end — but it does. The soundtrack is terrific too, and this is a family affair as Wim Wender’s wife Donata created the dream sequences. Running the whole range of emotions, it ends hopefully, joyfully and exquisitely, with some great end credit acknowledgements. Throughout we reflect as situations happen and people comment about Hirayama — is he lonely or alone? What does it mean to be seen and unseen? We see what he sees, time passes…We are left musing over the events of his daily life, such as people’s hidden qualities — the beautiful singing voice of the cafe owner, Takashi’s kindness to and fun with a friend, Aya’s longing for beautiful music and to be loved, not objectified.
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