Perfect Days (2023)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Tokyo Tapes

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Wim Wenders has worked regularly and steadily since the late 1960s/early 1970s, and while much of it slides right by, every so often he does something extraordinary. Perfect Days is one of those things. We know that he's a fan of Japanese cinema, and especially directors Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. This may have been an attempt to pay tribute to those masters, but it's also something very much his own.

He has begun by casting the great Kôji Yakusho, surely one of the finest Japanese actors of all time, and known for Shall We Dance? (1997), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), Shôhei Imamura's The Eel (1997) and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2002), Shinji Aoyama's Eureka (2000), Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins (2010) and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), and lots more.

Yakusho plays Hirayama, a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. The movie is largely plotless and focuses mainly on his routines. He takes photographs of nature (on film), collects and listens to old cassette tapes in his truck (he loves Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Nina Simone), and buys paperback books (by William Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith) from the bargain rack and reads at night before bed. He barely speaks, but seems to take great pride in his work.

He has an obnoxious assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who is as yappy as Hirayama is quiet. Takashi tries to woo the pretty Aya (Aoi Yamada), but Aya seems more interested in listening to Patti Smith than to Takashi's babbling. He also has a niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano), that comes to stay with him for a short while, having run away from home; they share some beautiful conversations, until her mother shows up, in a fancy car with a chauffeur, to take her back.

And he has an interaction with an unseen stranger, playing a friendly game of tic-tac-toe on a slip of paper slid behind one of the toilet stalls. In one of the final scenes, Hirayama simply listens to a stranger and shares a drink with him. It's a beautiful moment, but there are no moments in Perfect Days that are not beautiful.

While we take it all in, we begin to think about this man and the life he has carved out for himself, with all of its simplicities and habits and comforts. Is anything missing? Is he lonely? Does he have much pain? Certain moments offer tiny clues, but none more than the final moment, in which he feels his feelings. This man may have found a way out of the rat race, but that makes him no less alive.