Hirayama (Koji Yakusho, who will forever be remembered for the egg yolk scene in “Tampopu”) wakes up early in the morning to the rhythmic sounds made by a street sweeper’s broom. He folds the mattress and blanket, brushes his teeth and waters the plants. At the end of the wake-up routine, he puts on the overalls of the Tokyo Public Service Company, leaves his apartment, smiles at the sky and drives to work in his car. On his way he listens to favorite American songs from the sixties and seventies, including Lou Reed’s song that gave the film its name. Arriving at his first stop, he brushes the toilet and the mirrors and walls and continues from there to the next toilets, each of which has its own special look.
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The daily routine is disrupted when Hirayama hears a child crying. He finds him sitting on a toilet, and the boy says he lost his mother. Hirayama takes his hand and together they go to look for the lost mother. For a brief moment it seems that this is the generative event that will change the course of Hirayama’s life – as is customary in Hollywood cinema and in general – but a minute later the boy’s mother arrives, and the sober Hirayama returns to cleaning the toilets. During his lunch break he sits on a bench in the park and takes pictures of the trees, and even after work he has regular stops – the restaurant where he eats, the bookstore where he buys a book to read before bed, the store where he develops the photos he took with his old camera. Yes, he shoots on film, like he used to, and in the car he listens to tapes, as if he were still living in the seventies. He doesn’t seem to have a Facebook account.
In the eyes of others, including his sister who will appear later, Hirayama’s life seems like a big waste. He lives alone in a shabby neighborhood, works an unattractive job to say the least, and has no social life. But the smile on his face every morning, and the attention he pays to his work, and to the spirit of the owner, indicate a peace of mind, and a kind of joy in life. Some of the people he meets on his daily route are drawn to this serenity. And so did the viewers, much due to the magical performance of the 68-year-old Yakusho, who won him the actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the 1970s, German Wim Wenders made a name for himself with American-inspired travelogues such as “Alice in the Cities” and “During Time”. In the eighties “Paris, Texas” and “Angels in the Sky of Berlin” made him a revered filmmaker. But in the last thirty or more years, his notable films were documentaries (“Boa Vista Club”, “Pina”), while the feature films were mostly flawed. “Perfect Days” is not only his most complete feature film in many years, but it is a Japanese film in the full sense of the word. Japan even sent him to represent it at the Oscars, and he earned a place in the final five of the Best International Film category.
By the way, the public toilets in Shibuya are really stunning. “Perfect Days” (Photo: Public Relations)
In some ways Wenders returns here to the brooding intimacy of his early travel films, but more than that he took inspiration from the minimalist, humanistic and deeply moving cinema of Yesujiro Ozu. This is also expressed in the choice of the hero’s name – Hirayama is the surname of the main characters in “Tokyo Story” and other films by Ozu. It’s just that with Oz the heroes often find themselves disillusioned with life, while Wenders’s unambitious hero seems content.
Vanders in general was invited to Tokyo to visit a project in which 17 international designers were invited to design Public toilets in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. The initial idea was to dedicate short documentaries to them, but he decided to go for something else.
No, but really, what stunning public services. “Perfect Days” (Photo: Public Relations)
Wenders is not the first German filmmaker to make a Japanese film in Japan. In 2019, Warner Herzog, a long-time partner in the new German cinema movement, shot “Family Romance, LLC” in Tokyo, which also followed a unique Japanese phenomenon – a family for rent. Like Wenders, Herzog also opened up there to a different observation of life, and it was a film full of compassion and very unusual in his repertoire. Some of you may remember the (mostly) Japanese film by the German director Doris Dorey. “The Cherry Blossom”, whose plot was lifted from Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”, was a success in Israel in 2008. But while Dori’s film lacked the folklorization of Japanese culture, it seems that Wenders and Herzog really connected with the Japanese spirit and created complete and beautiful films, which hide a whole world beneath their modest appearance .
The majority of “Perfect Days”, which spans two hours, is devoted to Hirayama’s daily routine, into which various people burst into it – his young co-worker who is making fun of him, the cool young woman that the partner has a crush on, Hirayama’s niece who ran away from home (contrary to the promise in the synopsis that appears on the cinema’s website Lev, it does not change his daily routine in a fundamental way). Everyone tries a little to understand what motivates this enigmatic man, but none of them manage to shake his peace of mind. A short visit from his wealthy sister hints at the possibility of a difficult family past, but even this gap is not filled, despite flashes of black and white dreams at night.
Some Japanese? Hembasot in part. “Perfect Days” (Photo: Public Relations)
Because nothing dramatic happens in the movie, some will find it boring. Others will feel elation at the sight of the quiet man who has found a rare balance in his life. The songs of the Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Band of the Animals, which Hirayama carefully chooses, hint that his world is not as narrow as an ant’s world. When the ending song comes you will know it, and if you synchronize with the flow of the film, chances are good that you will feel like the singer who sang it.
4 stars
Perfect Days Director: Wim Wenders. With Koji Yakusho. Japan 2023, 124 min.
