PERFECT DAYS (TIFF 2023) – Review by Liz Braun
Is joy a choice?
In Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, a middle-aged man whose life is all about routine, ritual and discipline lives happily in the environment he has created for himself.
Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) lives alone and works cleaning toilets in Tokyo, a job he approaches with the same meticulous care and focused energy he devotes to everything else he does. He wakes up each work day to the sound of a local street sweeper, puts his bedding away, brushes his teeth and tends his table-top garden of saplings. Then he puts on a uniform and sets out for work.
He looks skyward to greet the day as he leaves his flat. Observation and gratitude seem to be the hallmarks of Hirayama’s existence. He cheerfully eats his lunch in the same park every day, where he photographs nature. He goes to the same bathhouse every night after work, visits the same diner for his evening meal and reads faithfully at bedtime.
The only alteration in his routine comes at the weekend, when he does his laundry and goes out for a drink.
The only hint that he ever might have lived differently is in his musical choices, all of them from the 1960s and ‘70s — Otis Redding, The Animals, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Lou Reed. He plays cassettes in his van as he drives around Tokyo, going from one public toilet to the next, to clean.
Various small incidents and minor Interruptions to Hirayama’s routine gradually shed more light on his character.
People don’t really register his presence — it’s just the toilet janitor — but he observes everyone, including the homeless, the lost and the isolated.
His interactions with a scattered young work colleague (Tokio Emoto) show Hirayama to be generous and compassionate. When his beloved niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) shows up at his house, having fought with her mother, Hirayama brings the young woman with him to work and lets her into his daily routine; he calls his sister to let her know where Niko is.
Later, a brief encounter with his sibling is a moment of devastating emotion, a nod to how much Hirayama had to leave behind to create the life he wanted.
The experience of seeing Perfect Days is a bit mesmeric. The film is slow and thoughtful and visually seductive. Several details (not just those cassettes) suggest that Hirayama chose not to fully embrace contemporary life, and it all plays like a primer on living in the present moment.
Perfect days was co-written by Wenders and Takuma Takasaki.
At the Cannes film festival last spring, Koji Yakusho was named Best Actor for this performance and Wenders won the 2023 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
Japan has chosen the film as its entry for Best International Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards.
