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The hero of German filmmaker Wim Wenders’ new film, Perfect Days, spends his time cleaning toilets.
Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) has opted for a simple and solitary life as a toilet cleaner in a park in Shibuya, one of the busiest districts in Tokyo. He seems content and happy with his life, which is self-determined and without any luxuries. His everyday routine is well organised, from watering the bonsai plants in his small apartment, to donning his work clothes, drinking canned coffee in front of his home and driving his big van to the park.
The only exotic place in the film appears to be The Tokyo Toilet, where Hirayama works. The toilet is clean, modern, spacious and even free to use. The basic human instinct is guaranteed to be satisfied here.
He encounters various toilet users and park regulars. There are young children, busy businessmen, a homeless man and a sultry young lady on her lunch break. Their detailed behaviour and Hirayama’s after-work and weekend hours of drinking beer and highballs, enjoying simple food and going to the public bathhouse are captured quietly and slowly.
Without much spectacle or drama, the film offers an entertaining and beautiful moment of reflection.
An elderly man from the neighbourhood complains that all beautiful things lose their beauty when they get older. The film depicts several naked elderly people in the public bath, including Hirayama, as part of its reflection on dealing with ageing.
The film invites viewers to reflect on the elderly man’s comments, by showing Hirayama’s body, which is not young, but is still good looking – a strong senior body. Elderly male bodies have rarely featured in cinema, except for a few, such as the ghostly image of the naked dead old bodies in the horror film The Shining (1980).
The film’s few dramatic moments come from Hirayama’s encounters with young and older women, including his younger co-worker’s girlfriend (Aoi Yamada), his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) and a barmaid called Mama-san (Sayuri Ishikawa). Subtle facial expressions, gestures and words express his still-vivid desire for the company of the opposite sex.
Life through the toilet
Hirayama does not seem to have found it difficult to afford a comfortable lifestyle, despite his presumably small salary. His taste also seems to testify to his intellectual, highly educated and cultured background: he regularly goes to his local bookshop and reads books by Patricia Highsmith and Japanese authors every evening.
Hirayama has voluntarily opted for a simple, frugal lifestyle that allows him to participate in economic, social and cultural life, and he seems to enjoy every moment of it.
And yet he still cries silently in a poignant scene while driving his car. In this last moment, shown through close-up, his tearful facial expression does not let the viewer know what kind of past he had. It’s unclear whether he has regrets about his present life, or even whether he’s crying because he’s happy or unhappy. His past can only be seen in the shadowy features of his dreams.
The open-ended narrative of this emotional moment does not demand that the viewer identifies with the hero but rather invites them to reflect on their own life and thoughts about growing older.
Wim Wenders’ Japan
Born in Düsseldorf in 1945, Wenders’ hometown had the largest population of Japanese people in Germany, with many Japanese restaurants, grocery stores and expats in the second part of the 20th century.
Japan is not a new setting for Wenders to explore. In 1985, he made the documentary Tokyo-Ga, which was awarded the coveted Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Tokyo-Ga was inspired by the Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu (1903-63), his 1953 film Tōkyō Monogatari (Tokyo Story) and Ozu’s cinematographers. Tokyo-Ga therefore explores “his” Japan, with a camera view that is partly borrowed from Ozu’s films.
Now, 38 years later with Perfect Days, Wenders is attempting to capture his own Japan in greater depth, in collaboration with Japanese colleagues. The screenplay was written by Wenders and Japanese filmmaker Takuma Takasaki and features only Japanese actors.
With Perfect Days, Wenders has created another “festival film” with its typical genre aesthetics: minimalist in cast, plot and colours, with long takes and mostly slow narrative development. The sound, both in the music and dialogue, is minimalist and concentrates on documenting the everyday life and small moments of the film’s unheroic hero, in documentary style.
I really enjoyed both the film’s aesthetics and subject matter, and the way it addressed in a contemporary way both how to deal with growing older, and the changing social dimension of other generations and cultures. In making the film, Wenders, a European auteur filmmaker has also become a trans-cultural Japanese filmmaker.
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Hyunseon Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
