Review: 'Perfect Days' is an almost perfect movie, as Wim Wenders examines the little moments that make life worthwhile
At 78, the German-born director Wim Wenders doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone — which makes the quiet magic of “Perfect Days” (which is up for an Oscar in the International Film category) even more impressive.
The movie, which Wenders filmed in Tokyo with a Japanese cast, is a moving consideration of the little joys of life — the beauty we miss because we’re not looking for it. That’s the sort of description that some will see as a red flag, a sign that there’s not really a plot here. There is, but not in the way you might think.
The movie starts as Hirayama (played by Koji Yakusho, from “Tampopo” and “Babel”) wakes up in his small Tokyo apartment to the sound of his neighbor sweeping in front of their building. He gets up, folds up his bedding, waters his plants, puts on his work uniform, goes downstairs and out the door, gets a canned coffee from the vending machine, and gets in his van. He picks out a cassette to listen to on the drive, providing some delightful needle drops that include The Animals “House of the Rising Sun,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and, yes, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”
Hirayama’s job is to clean public toilets in Tokyo’s city parks. He has a route of a dozen or so facilities, a steady routine of how to clean them — pick up the trash, wipe down the sinks, scrub the toilets, and so on — before going to the next one. Sometimes he has an assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who’s more focused on his phone than his work.
Through the day, Hirayama is smiling. He doesn’t smile because he’s a fool, or looking with bitter irony at the passing parade of shallow people. He smiles out of contentment, because he enjoys going through his life being useful and accomplishing something. He doesn’t even show irritation when he finds a lost child in one of his toilet facilities, and when he reunites the boy with his mother, the mom’s first reaction is to get a wet wipe for the hand the child was using to hold Hirayama’s hand.
When work is done, Hirayama begins another routine. He rides his bike. He goes to the public baths to wash off the day. He goes to an eatery, where the waiter always greets him with a glass of ice water. He has dinner, then goes back to his apartment, lays out his mat, reads a little William Faulkner, and goes to bed.
The next day starts the same, and so do several days after that. But the days are not identical. One day, Takashi’s punkish girlfriend, Aya (Aoi Yamada), rides in the janitorial fan with them and gets interested in Hirayama’s cassettes. (She’s got good taste — she picks Patti Smith’s “Horses.”) Another day is Hirayama’s day off, so we see him doing laundry, buying a paperback to replace the Faulkner, and collecting the prints from a roll of film with images of the trees he sees during his lunch break.
The closest thing Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki get to a summation, or a declaration of Hirayama’s philosophy, comes when he’s visited by his teen niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano). They’re riding their bikes over a bridge, and Niko wants to follow the river to the ocean. Hirayama says they can’t on this visit, but maybe next time. When’s that?, Niko asks. Hirayama’s reply: “Next time is next time. Now is now.”
The moviegoer gets to experience the “now” of Hirayama’s life, to appreciate the small moments of him enjoying his life. And we get to watch Yakusho, in a performance that’s as brilliant as it subtle, find the emotional gems of his character’s existence. (We also get to see a dazzling array of architecturally stunning public bathrooms, which Tokyo residents keep quite clean.)
And while “Perfect Days” isn’t driven by its plot, but that doesn’t mean there’s a down stretch or a wasted move. It’s a movie about the importance of little moments — and a movie that’s full of such little moments, every one of which is a reward.
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‘Perfect Days’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, February 23, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking. Running time: 123 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.