Social consciousness looks askance at sameness, but it values attention grabbing novelty and unexpectedness. We are promised that there is so much beauty in the new, in the unexplored. It’s so unexciting, it is claimed, to indulge in a never changing scenario of being stuck in the same circumstances each and every day. Perfect Days is devoid of drama. Instead, the story garners attention through tad movement and emotional shifts as we indulge more into Hirayama’s character. But what if repeating something is what cheers us up? What if it is what brings ease to our mind? What if it is a necessity for us?
In music rhythm pleasantness is widespread, patterns being repeated gives a sense of satisfaction and at times such as in life, they can be exquisite. There is poetry and beauty of all varieties immersed in an endless cycle, as Wim Wenders has explored with care in Perfect Days. Why would anyone look down on such practice? There is sufficient beauty embedded in practicing repetitive tasks alone at times.
Lead by Kuwata we were accompanied by Kōji Yakusho’s Hirayama, an ordinary person that is in his sixties and is a reclusive and gentle person living an exceptionally clean small house in the Oshige locale in Tokyo. Each day at sunrise he starts off the day by rolling his futon mat, grooming his mustash and watering his plants. A vending machine brightens up the dim mornings that he rushes to bring coffee for himself, after which he drives himself to work in his v small car. Once at work, he gets out and dons his jumpsuit before running errands around the streets of Shibuya.
Hirayama puts great emphasis on cleaning the toilets as if he were tending to the Mona Lisa, doing it with a lot of patience and precision, and he is practically unnoticeable by the clients. As they hurry in, he kindly cheerfully greets them and starts waiting. This is a rather humble calling, but a call nonetheless, and Hirayama, who has no veneer of pride to him, would not see it that way. A satisfying pause in the work is accompanied by feeling of achievement, after which he goes back home, puts away the futon mat and then cheerfully proceeds to the next day to do it all over again. Although, he does work on the real-life Tokyo Toilet project where they want to make toilets out of latrines, so those are lovely toilets, he has certainly set the bar high. Trainspotting this isn’t.
Is he happy with his life? So it seems. Being rather laconic and not given to speech, more likely to indicate than converse, he is neither a talker nor a listener. Or at least it appeared so, until his life is cut short, as is the life-force of the film and most importantly, his balance which was the man’s life. Unsteadiness.
It is worth noting that the film was co-written by Wenders and Takuma Takasaki, and that Wenders is now 78 years old and has dedicated 60 years to the industry. The sentiment is almost unthinkable that a director at such a young age would pay such a tribute to a person who was moderating everything, especially not so compassionately as Wenders is. Meanwhile, life experience spills out of 68-year-old lead Kōji Yakusho, his performance a masterclass in nuance.
There are moments when he is allowed to do so, but even then all the emotions interact in such a way that whole new emotions stem. What he was actually feeling is difficult to say in more than one way and in more than one word. The entire movie possesses that engaging quality: a lot is being said without verbally saying those words. So, perfect days sinks in quietly and gradually.
It’s all about that beat, and how we deal with the new ones when they come along. The film has an aspect of Buddhism wherein Hiraama never sees a tree he does not want to hug at least sage in lighting up the sun which he subsequently films. An easy-going, but firmly anachronistic figure, who listens to cassette tapes of Otis Redding, Lou Reed and Nina Simone while on the road, he is a relic of the early 1970s while the rest of the world moved on. He almost prays during his spare time: he visits the same bathhouses, the same bar and the same bookstores, every week. He is a man possible to live without time and yet in the now irrespective of how trivial such time is. And he regards his employment as something before which everything else is secondary. Or perhaps he would rather hide from such themes.
Yes, the film does incorporate it as well, and like the man, it is characteristically meditative while the camera man and cinematographer Franz Lustig keeps an amiable but covert glance on him. The film portrays Hirayama as somebody with a loving portrayal as well as a sense of humor, which makes this film one of a kind, especially the circumstances surrounding him with an unreliable and nervous young assistant, Takashi (Tokoi Emoto whom I can describe as a joyful puppy of a man) This is not entirely the case, but still the tranquil settles in and one cannot help but be astounded by how difficult it is to capture this aforementioned element especially in cinema nowadays. This method can also be employed in contemporary society.
It’s an average, and humorous, indifferent film which doesn’t have any impact on me personally and makes a spirit of people’s existence around me. It also depends on context, but it is almost how nourished those who aren’t supposed to see the world undergo a metamorphosis or step outside would be.
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