WIM WENDERS: PERFECT DAYS (2023) - NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL


KOJI YAKUSHO, ARISA NAKANO IN PERFECT DAYS

Humble joy of the quotidian

Beginning with a chronicling of the daily routine of a middle-aged Tokyo toilet cleaner called Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho), Wim Wenders' film, which blends four short stories for its screenplay, gradually develops something more, building to a quiet climax that is a bittersweet affirmation of life. It accomplishes this with the help of the famous actor who plays the lead, whose performance is a marvel of understatedness.

You will see Hirayama get up and fold away his traditional bed on the tatami-mat floor multiple times, wash his face, trim his mustache, dress, put on his work "TOKYO TOILETS" overalls, get coffee from a machine, drive off in his van, start to work. The public city toilets, let us note, are beautiful, modern places, housed in external architecture that is varied and handsome. The toilets and sinks are state of the art, probably the world's best. Japanese toilets have long had heated seats and gadgets inside that squirt warm water.

Hirayama is not incapable of speaking, but his style is not to speak much, especially when questioned.

All well and good. But this is not some Bressonian depiction of grim daily routine. It is routine. But it is not grim. Hirayama is happy. Getting in his van, he selects from his collection of vintage, mint condition tapes of Seventies rock and pop classics, which include (a partial list): "Redondo Beach" by Patti Smith, "Sleepy City" by the Rolling Stones, "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground, "Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding, "Sunny Afternoon" by The Kinks, "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison), "Feeling Good" (Nina Simone), and last but not least "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed. Hirayama's impetuous young coworker Takeshi (the comical Tokio Emoto) admires and covets these tapes and insists on taking Hirayama to show some of them to the clerk at a big shop for assessment and finds. As he's suspected, they turn out to be worth hundreds of dollars and Takeshi wants Hirayama to sell them. Of course he won't.

Hirayama loves trees, and at lunchtime he sits below an urban forest and takes a snapshot or two with ahn old film camera, of a favorite tree. Every week, a regular ritual, he goes to a camera shop where he loads a new roll in the camera, picks up a set of prints, and leaves off the latest roll to be printed. At home he goes through the new prints, throws out the bad ones, and files the new ones in a whole storage space of them.

When his work is done, Hirayama goes to a public bath were he gets clean and thoroughly soaks. Every day he does this. It's obviously a fulfilling and enjoyable experience - as well as a traditionally Japanese one.

Hirayama is a reader. There are many racks of books in his bedroom, and he makes visits and weekly purchases at a bookstore where he is known. He favors books that cost a dollar; the bookstore clerk approves his choices, such as Patricia Highsmith. He is reading Faulkner, and later Eleven Stories. He always reads before he goes to sleep, by the light of a reading lamp.

It seems like a perfect life, for Hirayama. He likes the work. It's the kind of job where you get immediate results. It's satisfying that way. Not only are the toilets pleasant, clean, modern ones. It may be in a shabby location (as is implied later), but Hirayama lives comfortably, in a house, on several floors, and drives a shiny van. He lacks for nothing. He looks fit. This appears to be a good job. It satisfies him, anyway. He eats out after work: he food is reasonable and tasty, and the faces are familiar.

Hirayama lives alone and barely speaks but he turns out to have daily friends and companions, at the places he frequents, the restaurants, bars, and the like, where he is a regular and is known and greeted in a friendly fashion.

But at this point, if not long before, we may begin to wonder: despite the air of the happy worker, isn't this an empty existence? Has Hirayama no family?

This is where the last quarter of the film's two-hour length comes through key breakthroughs, notably the sudden appearance of a neice Niko (Arisa Nakano), who has run away from home. This home turns out to be posh, as indicated by the luxurious chauffeured car in which her mother comes to collect her after a few days. And this in turn, though nothing is explained, suggests that Hirayama's job, which is news to his sister, may be a choice, like the priesthood.

Even after all this, and more interesting scenes where he talks, we still may not know why this life works for Hirayama or why he has chosen it, But we feel that we know Hirayama so well that his simple joy, in the van, after working, listening to his favorite music, brings a swell of emotion we never expected watching him wield his toothbrush and mustache clippers early on. Wenders' Perfect Days is a perfect example of a slow burner of a movie, in its way complete and fulfilling in and of itself, a "perfect film," in its deceptively modest way. Wenders may have thought of one of my favorite movies of all time, Akira Kurosawa's famous Ikiru, which builds slowly from the life of an unprepossessing man to a finale of deeply moving, luminous transcendence. We don't get that here, but Hirayama's life turns to have more to it than meets the eye.

Perfect Days, 123 mins., debuted May 25, 2023 at Cannes in competition, winning the rize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Actor Award for Kōji Yakusho. It became Japan's entry for the 2024 best foreign Oscar. Screened for this review as part of the New York Film Festival Oct. 11, 2023. Metacritic rating: 72%.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.