Perfect Days: Hanging On to the Best of Him

MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES:

Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.

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REVIEW:

Perfect Days, Wim Wenders film  about the daily life and routine of an elderly Japanese man, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho)  who cleans the public toilets of Tokyo doesn’t make me want to do his job.  But it does make me want to be the things he loves- trees and shadows. He photographs the sun filtering through one tree‘s leaves daily, and has a neatly stacked and well curated collection that goes back years in his closet.  Trees haunt his dreams with lovely black and white visions. He eats under a special lovely shady one everyday, watching souls walking by, longing for a connection for the one female  eating by herself, exchanging shy glances from the shade of an adjacent tree.  He saves the seedlings that would perish in the shade of the mother tree, sheltering them in his small apartment, gently watering the sprouts as part of his pre-work routine. And in addition, he performs his work well, a ritual that he treats with the fervor of a Buddhist monk.

Hirayama’s routines are his bulwarks against chaos. The same daily breath at the threshold of his door, drinking the same coffee from the same vending machine, eating the same sandwich under the same tree, snapping the same photos of the tree canopy, eating at the same bar, the same restaurant, the same bathhouse in his usual space, the same bookstore just different books bought from the same shelf, the same places where the same people who will always acknowledge who he is with little gentle niceties and favors, the same job with the same toilets.  When an other steps into his space or needs to use the toilet while he’s cleaning it, he steps reverently aside, head bowed, hands clasped in front, living sadly and humbly in their non-acknowledgement.

Perfect Days, Japan’s entry to the Oscars in the international feature category, was adapted from a proposal about Wenders doing a documentary that would elevate the profile of Tokyo’s pristine public toilets, which are wonders of architecture, design, functionality and engineering.  They are a hidden beauty of the city. He proposed a feature film instead.  The results are what a little poetic nostalgia and running and fleshing out an idea can achieve.

Hirayama prefers the analog life.  And Yakusho sells this character to the nth degree without making him feel a gimmicky creation.  He’s an old guy who feels no need for pretenses or for excusing the things he loves.  He grows like a tree- slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, spreading himself out to the full sunshine. He reveres the eternal, thus his fixation for photographing trees. In a way, Perfect Days explore what we lose when we explore the transitory life.

Perfect Days is also an eloquent example of the Japanese concept of komorebi– the quality of light and shadows as it filters through foilage.  Hirayama life is full of exactly that.  It’s never full on bright sunshine.  It glistens, constantly changes and variegates.  He loves the ever shifting colors and tries to capture it in memory and photos.  This way, he sees what others miss because he’s receptive to the change. He’s open to, knows and experiences life’s vitality like a tree would.  It’s no surprise that he passes the sky tree, which is the world’s tallest tower, everyday driving to and from work, buys a book with tree as its title, has a job where trees are always nearby. He surrounds himself with immortality, things that grow so slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet live long and almost outside of time- immune to rain, radiation, climate change and much more- things that know sun and shadow are essential to existence.

The title comes from a Lou Reed song that plays routinely on Hirayama’s tape deck.  “You keep me hanging on” is always floating in the small blue van’s air.  Hirayama’s way of life involves living with the shadows, not necessarily in them, hanging on to the quality of life’s sunshine and putting down deep, deep roots.

Perfect Days gets a 4.0/5 or a A-. 

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CREDITS:

Directed by

Wim Wenders

Written by

• Takuma Takasaki
• Wim Wenders

Produced by

• Wim Wenders[1]
• Takuma Takasaki[1]
• Koji Yanai[1]

Starring

Kōji Yakusho

Cinematography

Franz Lustig[1]

Edited by

Toni Froschhammer[1]

Production

companies

• Master Mind Limited
• Spoon Inc.
• Wenders Images

Distributed by

• DCM
• Bitters End

Release dates

• 25 May 2023(Cannes)
• 21 December 2023(Germany)
• 22 December 2023(Japan)

Running time

124 minutes

Countries

• Japan
• Germany

Language

Japanese

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