Review: Perfect Days

Image courtesy of The Match Factory.

Wim Wenders' "Perfect Days" might seem to some to have an ironic title. The film is, after all, about a toilet cleaner who spends his days mostly engaging in the quotidian and sticking to an orderly schedule. And yet, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) seems to relish the beauty he spots around him, sometimes in odd places - a game of Tic Tac Toe in one of the bathrooms that he cleans or the lovely, swaying Tokyo trees that he occasionally photographs.

People seem to mostly ignore Hirayama, as evidenced by the man nursing a hangover who knocks over his sign alerting bathroom users that the floor might be slippery and doesn't stop to apologize or pick it up, or the woman who willfully seems to not recognize his presence after he finds her lost child in a bathroom stall.

Some people might say Hirayama is living a life of resignation, but I'd say it's more one of acceptance. He takes his job seriously while cleaning the toilet stalls in upscale neighborhoods, and manages to be nice to his obnoxious co-worker (Tokio Emoto) and that guy's significantly more interesting girlfriend. 

All the while, Hirayama seemingly finds joy in the small everyday moments - listening to his cassette tapes (which populate the soundtrack with Lou Reed and Patti Smith songs) while he drives, observing people in the park, reading (William Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith are among the books he pores over in his semi-dark apartment), and eating night after night at the same restaurant, where the female proprietor knows what he wants before he's even able to order.

But is Hirayama hiding something? Is his situation a sort of forced penance? His dreams in black and white provide only slight glimpses, giving the impression that there's something on his mind, but there's not enough there for any definitive answers. His routine is broken up by the appearance of a runaway niece (Arisa Nakano), whose presence he obviously enjoys, but when his sister pulls up in a car with a driver up to pick up the girl after a day or so, she seems surprised that he is cleaning toilets for a living. In a final shot in which Hirayama drives his car listening to Nina Simone, he appears to vacillate between smiling and just the faintest hint of tears in his eyes. 

However, anything else in Hirayama's life other than what we see is simply to be inferred by the audience. There's a scene that stuck with me during which Hirayama is staring at a nondescript patch of earth that appears to be covered by some sort of bags. A man approaches and asks Hirayama if he recalls what used to be in the spot, hinting that it was something more attractive than what's currently occupying it. "That's what happens when you get old," the man retorts. Beautiful things fade and are occasionally replaced by ugly ones.

"Perfect Days" is Wenders' best film in a while and it's also one in a long line of works inspired by Japan. The director previously shot two documentaries in the country - "Notebook on Clothes and Cities" and "Tokyo Ga," which was directly inspired by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu's work - also very present in the style of "Perfect Days" - and "Until the End of the World" included a section in that nation. 

In the 1980s, Wenders was one of the greatest working filmmakers, and his "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire" are enduring masterpieces. Much like Werner Herzog, another member of the New German Cinema, Wenders has spent recent years making smaller independent films and documentaries. "Perfect Days" is his most potent in some time. This is a movie about living a life of simplicity that hints at much greater complexities. Yakusho gives an excellent leading performance and Wenders was smart to mostly center an entire movie around his day-to-day life. This movie is a small gem.