How do you find happiness in your work? No job, no matter how fulfilling or exciting, is immune from the tedium of routine or bureaucracy. That is the initial draw to Perfect Days, the most recent film from legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders. It follows a man who radiates joy, the kind of contentment that puzzles onlookers, mainly because his job involves cleaning public toilets. The film is also set in Tokyo, a metropolis where public toilets in the morning might be decimated by drunks the night before. This man is more misunderstood than enigmatic, and over the course of the film, we get small clues about the choices that led him to this point. It is a fascinating character study, punctuated by ephemeral moments beauty and a great soundtrack of tasteful classic rock. Like Ikiru, another Japanese film about a man who eventually finds meaning in work, Perfect Days might inspire its audience to lead better lives.
The first day we spend with Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) unfolds almost entirely without dialogue. He gets up early, goes through several deliberate routines, then sets off to work. He visits public toilets throughout the city, the kind you might find in a public park or where groups congregate, and goes through his tasks with precision. Crucially, Wenders and his co-screenwriter Takuma Takasaki decline to show just how disgusting public toilets can get, so there is no disconnect between Hirayama’s persistent smile and the sight of a defiled bathroom.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Aside from the attentive handling of his job, the only clues we get about Hirayama are the moments in between work and sleep: he has great taste in music – there is a lovely subplot where he introduces a young woman to Patti Smith – and he likes to read before bed. Sometimes he snaps a photo with his camera. There is clearly a mind beneath the veneer of joy, so this man is no simpleton. Wenders reveals additional details slowly, mainly by having Hirayama converse bashfully, but he mostly remains a man of few words.
In its opening stretch, Perfect Days is an unlikely fantasy. Hirayama is immune to the grind and hustle most of us face, and although the film is set in the present, everything tactile in his life is at least a couple generations old. He only listens to cassette tapes, he only buys books from one well-curated seller, and he develops rolls of film for a private collection. But as his days continue, we start to sense there is something in his past that made him this way. His pleasant demeanor hides a painful shyness, and he has no real interest in pursuing normal relationships. No one comes to that point of view overnight, and Wenders recognizes that any direct explanation might be a betrayal. By the time we meet his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), we realize that Hirayama acted quite differently in a previous life.
Along with cinematographer Franz Lustig, Wenders shoots Japan in a way that suggests that beautiful imagery can be found by anyone who seeks it. This is not to say Perfect Days includes a scene like American Beauty, where Hirayama would be moved to tears by a plastic bag (if anything, his impulse would be to clean it up). Instead, he stays in the reality of his present, so when something striking occurs to him – like how the light dances with the trees in a park – he is truly there to see it. That kind of approach sounds corny, and yet Wenders’ experience with following soft-spoken heroes means we are more curious than bored. There is a little of Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire to Perfect Days, insofar as the hero stays out the mainstream, until circumstances push him back into it.
Yakusho has been in movies for decades, and this might be his finest role yet. It also quite a departure from his last big role with an international audience, the action epic 13 Assassins from Takeshi Miike, a role where his “hero shot” involves looking at his enemy with a death stare while wiping the blood off his blade. None of that anger is here, although you can sense his passion in a downplayed way. There are small scenes, like when Hirayama strikes up a brief friendship with a stranger his age, or when he catches a glance of a woman throughout his day, where he indulges in curiosity. No man is an island, and these attempts to push Hirayama out of his shell suggest that, despite his contentment, he approaches his life from a feeling of shame. Wenders disagrees, and there are moments in the final scene where he seems more at ease, even with the intrusion of barriers he has worked so hard to build. This is not the story of someone who finally opens up, but someone who realizes he deserves an ordinary kind of happiness as well.
Although Hirayama’s niece makes the most significant progress with him, the real change in his worldview is almost imperceptible. Hirayama finds a 3 x 3 grid in one of the stalls his cleans, so he decides to fill one square, and begin a long tic-tac-toe game over several days, maybe even weeks. Of course, Wenders and his character have no way of knowing whether each new square is filled by the same person, and that is beside the point. However remote, Hirayama finds a way to commune with others, a small interaction that makes the rest possible. By the time “Perfect Day” gently plays over the final moments, Hirayama is ready to commune with Lou Reed’s wistful cadence, a surprising journey that unfolds internally. Like Reed, Hirayama internalizes that the best days, no matter how content or filled with beauty, are almost always better with someone else.
The post Revisit: Perfect Days appeared first on Spectrum Culture.