Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Koji Yakusho, Aoi Yamada, Arisa Nakano
The idiosyncrasies of Japanese culture have proven a draw for a spectrum of world-famous directors who have made their tourism into art. From Abbas Kiarostami with Like Someone in Love through Werner Herzog’s Family Romance, LLC, going back further to the likes of Chris Marker with AK and even Wenders’ own diaristic Tokyo-Ga. It is often the seemingly-pristine parallel lines of the country’s great metropolis Tokyo that acts as a shimmering lure. A magnetic maze. And so it goes again here in a true late-career bloom from the German auteur known as much for his documentaries as his narrative flourishes.
Wenders borrows a few tools from Marker’s muse Akira Kurosawa here for the lightly Ikiru-inflected Perfect Days, a poem of everyday observations centred around Koji Yakusho’s ageing janitor Hirayama; a man of few words but of multitudinous worlds. “The world is made up of worlds” he sagely tells his wayward niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) in the film’s second act when she spends a day or so in his company having run away from home, and its as much as we’ve heard from him verbally in half a movie, but it speaks to his deft appreciation of the environs and characters he moves between in his daily life.
Routines are the first point of concern in Perfect Days, which follows Hiroyama through something like a fortnight of his life. A sense of orderliness purveys even before we’re made familiar through repetition. One senses how everything in his modest apartment has its place and is kept in readiness particularly for the efficiency of his early mornings. Also how his environment has informed this schedule. He doesn’t use an alarm clock so much as he relies on being roused by the regular sweeping of a neighbour; lightly suggesting an entire Rube Goldberg city of interconnected yet isolated business. Chain reactions and hive activity are mirrored on the Micro Machine expressways that zip him through the heart of the city, observed by Wenders from afar in little echoes of Lang’s Metropolis.
One can almost smell the bleach while we’re guided through the stops on his tour of the city’s public toilets. It might sound like lowly work, but Hiroyama’s steadfast ethic is admirable. He takes pride in it, and so a sense of personal reward is quickly engendered. Wenders seems to be of the mindset that life is what you make of it, and this manifests through Hiroyama’s dogged integrity. With his affection for cassette tapes (a solid collective of classic rock staples) and dog-eared second hand paperbacks, Wenders connects Hiroyama’s principles to a bygone era, suggesting that these qualities are very recently lost, or at least at risk. This is reflected further in the lazy disinterest of Hiroyama’s young and foolish workmate Takashi (Tokio Emoto). There’s a strong conservative reading of Perfect Days.
Yet the breeziness here also dissuades any fervent political meaning in the film, suggesting instead a philosophical one. Its there in the slight, contemplative spaces that exist, in the moments where Hiroyama communes with nature (either in his controlled indoor garden at home, or on his lunch breaks beneath a canopy of trees), and in the monochrome dream collages that bookend every day of this enterprise. Cinema is replete with dream imagery. Wenders joins Mia Hansen-Løve on the list of directors to recently conjure their feeling both vividly and delicately.
What’s proffered forth here, then, is a portrait of a simple life given meaning by the worth its protagonist brings with him. Hiroyama’s work/life balance is delicately feathered in with a further set of self-fulfilling regimes. The books he reads. The photos he takes. The public baths and bars he frequents as a regular. It may be a modest life, but it is a full one. Once established, the film peppers in light comedy and tension through interruption. Niko’s visit shades in humour and poignancy, providing greater context and adding an element of class disparity to this portrait. An unexpected double shift required of Hiroyama late on in the picture underscores just how precarious this judicious balancing act is. Many will relate to the sudden flood of exhaustion at having a routine upended. Hiroyama finds satisfaction in his work, but it is telling that his bandwidth for this only goes so far.
Yakusho’s performance is a delight of accumulation. To begin with it can feel as though he’s barely doing anything. More functional than expressive. But the longer you spend with him, the more nuances reveal themselves. Wenders pushes things to the brink at the very end with a long, fourth-wall break that strains for catharsis. It’s arguably a step over the line, but you can’t fault Yakusho’s commitment to it.
Franz Lustig’s delicate and warm cinematography is a perfect match to the material, and through it Wenders tips his position as a fascinated tourist, looking upon Tokyo with the eye of an intoxicated outsider. It still works, mainly thanks to Hiroyama’s position in the piece as a relatively passive presence; an observer who has placed himself a little outside of the world, a symptom of prolonged and comfortable self-reliance. Perfect Days is a study in being alone but not being lonely, even as it acknowledges the sudden bloom that occurs when fleeting connections are made.
The Lost Highway Hotel 