The devil may be in the details, but so too is divine bliss, at least for Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a middle-aged man who cleans toilets for a living, resides by himself in a neatly arranged apartment, and goes about his days and nights according to his very particular and easygoing routines. Perfect Days is the story of this Tokyo man’s humdrum existence and the small yet meaningful interruptions to his customary schedule, told with gentle compassion and laced with an undercurrent of longing and regret. The finest film from German director Wim Wenders in at least two decades, it’s a sweet and sad slice-of-life about the comfort and sorrow of solitary repetition, buoyed by a Yakusho performance that rightly earned him the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Japan’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the forthcoming 96th Academy Awards, Perfect Days exudes the laidback contentment of its protagonist Hirayama, a loner whose mornings, noons, and nights are governed by the same rituals. Waking without an alarm to the sound of a neighbor sweeping the streets, he methodically folds up his sleeping mattress and blanket in his flat, gets ready at his sink, and exits the front door with a gaze up at the sky, his trademark muted smile on his face. Procuring a canned coffee drink from the nearby vending machine, he drives in his equipment-packed van to the city’s many public restrooms, where—in a blue jumpsuit that reads “The Tokyo Toilet”—he scrubs, mops, and wipes down everything with meticulous thoroughness, complete with him using a hand mirror to make sure that the underside edges of the toilets and urinals are spotless.
Whether he’s on his hands and knees tidying up other people’s messes or waiting outside the door as someone hurriedly relieves themselves, Hirayama performs his job with a look of serene satisfaction and few words, even when he’s working alongside his chatty younger colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto). Hirayama exists on a tranquil wavelength all his own, motoring around Tokyo while listening to his ’70s and ’80s cassette tapes of Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and the Rolling Stones, spending his lunch hours using an old-school Olympus camera to snap photographs of (and stare gladly at) trees rustling in the faint breeze, and using his weekends to process those pics and to visit a local bookstore. From where he eats to how he sleeps to his dreams—comprised of smeary black-and-white visions of shadowy leaves and branches, headlights, and street scenes spied from moving vehicles and bicycles—Hirayama moves along his own predetermined track. In his eyes and grins, it’s evident that this monotony provides him with the security and joy he covets.
For long stretches, Perfect Days simply follows Hirayama on his daily routes, his personality epitomized by his adherence to convention and attention to the little things. Wenders shoots his action with a poise and stillness that matches that of his subject, even as he finds different angles and perspectives from which to watch recurring incidents. For Hirayama as it is for all of us, it’s always the same and yet also slightly different, and the director conveys his protagonist’s uniform reality with a poetic touch. Simultaneously, though, he stirs the waters via humorously unexpected situations, as when Hirayama is compelled to give Takashi and his would-be girlfriend Aya (Aoi Yamada) a ride in his van, and is subsequently convinced to visit a tape-trading store where Takashi—short on funds and desperate to impress Aya—wants to sell some of Hirayama’s beloved (and, apparently, quite valuable!) cassettes.
Perfect Days is happy to spend time in Hirayama’s company, and additionally, to traverse the metropolis, considering its impressively varied and inventive public restrooms. These spaces are as unassuming and orderly as Hirayama, and his intrinsic relationship with every locale he visits and inhabits lends the proceedings its harmonious lyricism. Wenders never stresses such connections but, rather, suggests them through scene after soothing scene of the character accomplishing his chosen tasks. The effect is borderline hypnotic, if not always totally peaceful; at the edges of certain interactions, such as at a restaurant where the owner (Sayuri Ishikawa) sings a mournful version of “House of the Rising Sun,” Hirayama’s aloneness feels an awful lot like alienation. That impression is amplified when he receives a surprise visit from Niko (Arisa Nakano), the daughter of his estranged sister (Yumi Asō).
Niko’s appearance is Perfect Days’ most significant narrative rupture, and while Hirayama continues to carry out his duties with his niece by his side—even teaching her a couple of tricks of the trade along the way—he’s somewhat shaken by her presence. During their handful of days together, tidbits about Hirayama’s past trickle out. Yet Wenders and Takuma Takasaki’s dialogue-light script doesn’t reveal more than tantalizing hints about how and why Hirayama found himself in his present circumstances. What’s discernible comes from Yakusho’s placid countenance, and the traces of despondency that slowly creep into its creases. It’s a lead turn of carefully modulated expressiveness, infused with a soulfulness that alludes to a rich (and perhaps not altogether cheerful) secret history.
Be it by playing a game of tic tac toe with a stranger via a piece of paper wedged into a bathroom nook, his wordless nods to a homeless man (Min Tanaka) who lives in an urban park, or his loving admiration for the city’s many trees, Hirayama is in constant, silent communion with the people and world around him. Still, no matter the gratification he gets from his habitual procedures and practices, there’s something disquieting lurking beneath the surface. In a final, intriguing encounter with a dying stranger (Tomokazu Miura) who shares a bond with the restaurateur he knows (and ostensibly fancies), Hirayama states, “Nothing is changing after all? That's just nonsense.” In doing so, he subtly evokes the push-pull between stasis and transformation that seemingly troubles him, and which comes to the fore in a stunning closing close-up—Hirayama’s face repeatedly segueing between smiles and tears—that encapsulates Perfect Days’ portrait of the pleasure and pain, safety and scariness, of a routine life.
