Perfect Days—thankfully a more ironic title than it initially appears—is, of course, borrowed from the quasi-eponymous Lou Reed song. That song, an immensely misunderstood ode to a rather more conflicted sort of day than it appears, eventually bursts into a chorus of “You’re going to reap just what you sow,” which has a distinctly threatening edge.
Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders’ most recent movie in a surprisingly prolific late career, songs appear to play a pretty straightforward role in explicating the main character’s feelings: all the needle-drops here, taken from a tape of ’60s music that the main character plays in the car, seem to express his current frame of mind. At first, this chimes with what seems like a very simple, not to say simplistic narrative set-up.
Over and over, we are shown the almost totally uneventful daily routine of Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) as he rises, clears away his fold-down futon, brushes his teeth, trims the bristles of his mustache with a small pair of scissors, and chooses a tape to play on his way to work, which consists of cleaning public toilets around Tokyo. On his lunch break he sits in the same park and takes photos of trees. At the end of his day, he eats in a cafe; on his days off he rides his bicycle to the public baths and scrubs himself thoroughly.
The songs fit into this ritualistic existence, not least because they are a part of the simple pleasures that this ceaselessly mild, borderline silent man appears to derive from his apparently quite menial life. And, due to Wenders’ delicate filmmaking, beautifully shooting the city in carefully constructed frames, we also derive pleasure: delight in sunlight streaming through leaves; joy in the unusual architecture of the public toilets; enjoyment also of watching so much cleaning and scrubbing, performed with diligence and care. And yet a doubt begins to creep into the movie, or perhaps a mystery. Are we watching a simple depiction of Zen-like contentment, or is there more to Hirayama? Is he clinging to these rituals like a life-belt? Do they compensate for a lack in his life?
Part of that mystery stems from the beautiful performance given by Yakusho in the lead role, whose face at rest is eminently watchable, even soothing, but who is also careful to project something more, something unknowable. When a disruption occurs to Hirayama’s carefully devised routine—his younger colleague, a foolish and lovelorn chatterbox, abruptly quits, leaving Hirayama to clean all the toilets throughout the city—the older man is perfectly flummoxed. This first act of deregulation presages further disturbances that are set to rock Hirayama’s life.
First among these, the surprise arrival of his runaway niece, who stays with Hirayama for a few days in his little apartment. This has the effect of upending his routine both metaphorically and actually, leading him to decamp from his usual sleeping quarters, to leave space for her. Wenders plays this pairing for a sweet sort of comedy, with the shy Hirayama literally running away from his niece in order not to see her undress; there is, too, a lovely bond between the two of them, based on a shared love of photography. But, when Hirayama’s sister comes to pick up her niece from his house, we are stunned to see that she is an extremely wealthy woman, who suggests that Hirayama comes from the same background.
In other words, this man has purposely chosen a life below his “station;” we understand, from subtle tidbits in dialogue between the siblings, that Hirayama is recovering from what sounds like an abusive childhood. In a devastating moment, his sister implores him to visit their father, who is old and ailing. He refuses. More mysteries exist here, more beauty: woozy dream sequences, filmed in black and white; cityscapes drenched with the color of nightlights; a bar singer reciting a song, in which Hirayama seems to lose himself to a private reverie.
There is a delicacy, a hushed sort of intimacy, in these moments, in which Wenders chooses to disclose information without resorting to dramatics. Because of the artful construction of the film, mirroring Hirayama’s routine but staying a little at a remove, there is a sense that we have been discreetly let in on something; that we are sharing secrets, in as sensitive a way as possible.
If Perfect Days sometimes superficially resembles Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson—another film about a manual worker who finds fulfillment in the everyday—there are different, singular pleasures to be had here, including what seems to be a generous and heartfelt engagement with Japanese culture. Some of the film’s rehearsal of zen contentment may occasionally slip into the schmaltzy or anodyne—for instance, a game of noughts and crosses that Hirayama plays with a mysterious stranger, day by day, hidden in a crevice in one of the bathrooms; let’s not go too Amelie!—but Perfect Days’ delicacy, its humanity, are absolute.
