With Paris Texas, Wim Wenders made one of the, possibly *the*, greatest ‘America through the eyes of an outsider’ movies of all time, so it should come as little surprise that his latest move to a new country – in this case Japan – should bear rich fruit. Perfect Days, a quiet slice-of-life drama about a middle-aged toilet cleaner in Tokyo finding meaning and beauty in mundane ritual, is an ode to Japan of a sort that Westerners rarely manage. Instead of delving into the fantastical natural beauty of the countryside or exotic futurism of the cities, here is a film impressed simply by a city whose residents take care of it, a world away from the individualistic indifference of London or Paris or New York, and able to house quiet beauty around every corner thanks to that fact.
This toilet cleaner is Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a man of very few words – he much prefers reading and listening to music to speaking, and the first noise he makes in the film, after 10 or so minutes of silence, is a simple yelp of surprise when two kids playing hide and seek burst out at him. His rituals are set, waking up every day not to an alarm but to the sound of the street sweeper, maybe the only person in the neighbourhood who gets up earlier than him, grabbing an iced coffee and trundling around Tokyo in his van listening to classic rock and cleaning the same cluster of public loos every day.
Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki are in no hurry to explicitly fill us in on the details of Hirayama’s life (at a very leisurely 2+ hours, Perfect Days does run a little long for a story this understated), but that’s not to say he’s flatly characterised. Little moments in his routine, such as the fact that he always deliberately leaves a clearly important watch at home, give hints of grief or a retreat from life, while we learn what he values as he sits in silent, semi-mentorly judgement of his younger, chattier, and rarely on time co-worker, who proves to not quite be the airheaded dope he initially appears.
A film about watching a man with an unexciting job go to work for a week or so (Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson feels like an obvious touchstone here) might sound like a slog and though Perfect Days isn’t always exactly gripping, it never loses your attention either. It’s not long before Hirayama’s small joys become our small joys, the calming isolation of his house and van almost even enviable at points, while the soundtrack of Hirayama’s driving jams is just banger after banger – watching a Tokyo sunrise to the music of The Animals, Nina Simone, and, of course, Lou Reed is never less than a great time.
Outside of his particular eye on Tokyo and some very brief but always profoundly striking black-and-white dream sequences, Wenders isn’t exactly saying much novel here – ‘slow down and smell the roses’ is, for the most part, its driving agenda. Yet, with a world this wonderfully lived-in – you’ll desperately want to be a patron of Hirayama’s local bar and bookshop – and a lead performance from Yakusho that doesn’t put a foot wrong, Perfect Days’s life lessons still wash over you like a balm.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 