Perfect Days

It won't blow you away, but you will not leave empty-handed. For two weeks, we follow a Japanese toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Not much happens, but that is the beauty of it all. Hirayama, played by fantastic Koji Yakusho, does his job, listens to excellent music, reads books, and goes about his everyday, unexciting routine. It does not sound special, right? But it is.

For Hirayama, the small, boring, and common things are beautiful. He stops for a moment and looks at the beautiful trees, which the rest of us walk past daily and never notice. When you leave the theaters, your walk home will be special. It's impossible to watch this movie without going outside and appreciating the small (but beautiful) things.

It's a movie about mundane life, in different ways. While watching this movie you might think, where is this story going? Is something happening? Will his routine fall apart? Is he meeting someone? Maybe, maybe not...

The story will make you conscious about simple things in your daily life. Those activities can be happy, a little sad or unexpected. It's all about your own perception.

Overall, this movie was relaxing to experience and eye-opening in an interesting way. When I walked out of the cinema and looked around it made me feel very privileged about life. Every person experiences satisfactions in their own way. If you are a homeless, disabled, a CEO, a toiler-cleaner, happiness finds its way.

Yes, the movie about the guy cleaning toilets in Japan for two hours is up there among the best of 2023. I was worried it might be boring, but once the routine of the protagonist is established, there are gradually more dramatic elements revealed, and I feel like the whole film is about finding happiness or at least some level of contentment in the mundane. That gives it a similarity to Paterson, but I feel like it's really only the first half of Perfect Days that feels super comparable; there are added elements here in the second half that help the two feel different.

Wim Wenders loves driving, he loves Japan, and he loves great music, and you get a lot of all three here. I think it's my favorite film of his besides the epic Until the End of the World (also partly set in Japan, also with much driving, and also with a killer soundtrack), but there are many films of his I should revisit, because I might've been too young for them when I did watch them (Paris, Texas comes to mind).

If you're able to settle into a groove the same way the main character does here, I think Perfect Days ends up being surprisingly engrossing for most of its runtime. I was glad to see it in a cinema, and without any distractions. Parts of it also reminded me of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, but that one's more provocative in highlighting boredom, and wants to wear the viewer down to make them feel the plight of the titular character. Perfect Days gives you 12 days (I counted) in the life of someone who has a profession that sounds boring, but captures small moments throughout nearly two weeks in this guy's life that show happiness and beauty with his lifestyle.

I liked spending time with this character, I loved how the film looked and sounded music-wise, and I appreciated all the quiet yet touching moments; some of them funny, and some of them sad. I don't know if Perfect Days is for everyone, and it might not have even been for me, had I watched it on a different day or in different circumstances. But all I know is that it hit the spot today, and that's all that matters today. "Now is now," as they say in the film itself.

I saw it as a kind of poem about happiness in fair, simple terms , as refuge against high expectations and social pressure, as precise portrait of the relation with the others.

I saw it, in same measure, as a sort of idealisation of life, moral lesson, fair portrait of lonely man and cold definition of truth..

Not less, I saw it as portrait of me, sure, in basic terms, with large slices of desire to real be.

But, out of this identification with Hirayama, Perfect Days has the gift to be a beautiful, admirable crafted, scene by scene, film. In essence, this is the real thing matters . Near the great music. A beautiful exploration by Wim Wenders of dreams of his audience , with some bovaric touch, about a life who was not him.

The film starts slow, but that's the point. We start to know a dedicated Tokyo toilet cleaner who goes through his daily routine, apparently happy with his life. Then a series of minor events cause upheaval: his colleagues, family, and romantic interest remind him of life's missed opportunities. All very subtle reminders that you can be perfectly happy in a bland life following your daily routine, but that life's circumstances are forever changing, and are inviting and challenging you to lead life on a higher, more interesting level. The closing shot reveals a clearly emotional toilet cleaner driving to work: life's new opportunities have unsettled him. The open ending leaves us wondering what's next. A great movie that is largely carried by the phenomenal Koji Yashuko: he superbly carries the story with his facial expressions between the extremely sparse dialogues. The cinematography by Franz Lustig is also incredibly good: the closing scene, the loving lighting of the numerous toilets, etc. I'd rate it higher but the film is vaguely unsatisfying in its sublety: it generates the itch but just barely scratches it. But definitely one of the best films of 2023.