'Perfect Days' Is a Beguiling Masterpiece From Wim Wenders

Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) is a public toilet cleaner in what looks to be his sixties. Living in a small apartment in an unglamorous part of Tokyo, he wakes every day at dawn to the sound of an older woman sweeping the streets outside. He rises, puts away the small paperback that he fell asleep reading the night before, tenderly sees to his collection of plants and cuttings, brushes his teeth, grabs his keys and a canned coffee from the vending machine outside, and makes the commute across town in his small van loaded with equipment and music cassettes to upmarket Shibuya where he will begin his shift.

Attending to his work with meticulous care and attention to detail, Hirayama makes his way through the various modern and strikingly designed toilets that are on his list. His younger colleague, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), is louder, less careful, and seemingly never tires of trying to make conversation with Hirayama. Finishing his shift, Hirayama visits a small bar where he orders water with ice, and if he has finished his latest Highsmith or Aya Kōda then he might visit his regular secondhand bookshop to pick up something new to read. If he has run out of film in his camera, he will go pick up more, as well his developed photos from last time. Smiling, greeting everyone near enough wordlessly, Hirayama exudes warmth and contentment. His drives are accompanied by carefully chosen soundtracks: Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and The Animals feature heavily.

As may be apparent from that description, Perfect Days is a patient, glacially paced film. Hirayama’s actions are shot deliberately and in loving detail. His routine is the bedrock of the movie as much as it is of his life. Whether he is cleaning toilets or taking his lunch break in a small oasis of a park in the city, we are taken through all of it, mostly with minimal dialogue. There are no hyperactive montages here, no attention-attenuated rush to get to the next ‘thing that happens’. Roger Ebert once famously said: ‘It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.’ Even speaking as a fan of ‘slow’ cinema, in the wrong hands a project like this could easily end up misfiring. The hands here, however, belong to veteran filmmaker Wim Wenders, and Perfect Days is…well, nigh on perfect. It begins with such a carefully built-up image of routine and normality that, as an audience trained to anticipate something going wrong, we expect to be shattered. I’m not going to reveal more here, except to say that this is both true and not. Suffice it to say, despite its gentle appearance, the film packs a mighty emotional punch.

It also functions as a joyous ode to the pleasures of analogue. Shot in 4:3 in an homage to the great Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, Franz Lustig’s warm cinematography finds endless delight in Hirayama’s world, lovingly documenting his work as well as his passions. In a perfectly pitched version of what could otherwise be quite a tired joke, Hirayama reveals he has no idea what Spotify is. He thinks it’s a shop. Spending time with him as he gets lost among used paperbacks and rare edition cassettes, forging connections with the people who lovingly curate those collections, we can’t help but be envious. No digital subscriptions, no social media, what a blessed existence! We are drowning in digital white noise. Hirayama breathes crisp analogue air.

This is a film that has affected me deeply. Premiering at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 23rd May 2023, it picked up a Best Actor Award for Kōji Yakusho, and that prize couldn’t be more deserved. Yakusho delivers a truly astounding performance, bringing to life—largely with his expressions and body language!—an instantly iconic character with levels of humor and humanity that other actors could study. The subtlety and lyrical beauty of Perfect Days is going to stay with me for a long, long time. As will one of the one of the most remarkable ending shots in recent memory. See this film.