“Perfect Days” Review
A janitor (Kōji Hashimoto) spends time with his niece (Arisa Nakano) as he navigates everyday life in Tokyo in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days”, a nominee for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Like most of you, I love seeing a film that makes me feel like life is a miracle and that every day is a gift. That’s why I watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” around Christmas, “Groundhog Day” every February and “Ikiru” whenever I feel like it. However, I find that the most life-affirming films have the smallest of stakes. I like Rob Reiner’s “The Bucket List”, about two terminally ill friends that travel the world, but I love “Chef” which is just about a prestigious chef finding himself by opening a food truck. It feels more realistic and I find that the feeling of euphoria is stronger. Well, if a food truck can make me feel so warm inside, watching “Perfect Days” gave me the most incredible rush of joy that I’ve had in a while and all from an incredibly simple, but deep, story.
Set in Tokyo, Hirayama (Kōji Hashimoto) is a cleaner of public toilets who seems content with his simple life. He goes to work, listens to music, reads books, plants trees, takes photographs and mostly keeps to himself. As his daily routine becomes more ingrained in the audience, there do come times when his habits are broken and we truly see the gentle soul behind the silent janitor.
To best describe “Perfect Days”, I’d like to reference the biggest money-maker of 2023. There’s a scene in “Barbie” where she’s sitting on a bench and just watching the people around her. She sees people in love, people alone, people happy, people sad, people with children and she quietly cries. She then turns and sees an old woman. She tells the woman “you are so beautiful” and the woman responds with “I know.” Then they both smile. Imagine a whole film like that. “Perfect Days” is beautiful, poignant and doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, making it a laid-back experience with so much meaning.
While this film has several great people behind the camera, including a Palme d’Or-winning director, “Perfect Days” truly belongs to Kōji Hashimoto whose performance is remarkable in every sense of the word. For a majority of the film, Hirayama is silent yet Hashimoto’s expressions and actions are more than enough to understand what he’s thinking. Winning the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, Hashimoto’s performance has more in common with the great silent actors like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton than any modern performer and there’s something wonderful about that. “Perfect Days” relies mainly on visuals to move the story along and Hashimoto’s face is the best visual there is.
Hirayama is exceptionally likable and instantly hooks you into his life. Hirayama has a pretty menial job but he does it to the best of his ability. He takes pride in what others would find demeaning and he finds all of these little moments that give him a sense of contentment. We never find out much about this character but, by the film’s end, he’s practically family. We know all of his hobbies, his quirks and the strong empathy he has for others, even if they don’t deserve it.
With Wim Wenders, I wasn’t surprised that he took a meticulous approach to the story of “Perfect Days”. After all, this is the same man who made “Paris, Texas”. However, I was still lovingly surprised by how real this film felt. Instead of cinematic spectacle, I felt like I was watching this intimate look at someone’s life and Wender’s direction and screenplay, cowritten with Takuma Takasaki, are major contributors to that. Apparently, the film was shot over 17 days in Tokyo and it feels so natural that way, almost in real time. I can’t recall just how many days the film covers but 17 sounds about right to me. The immersion I felt into such an ordinary life was reminiscent of when Richard Linklater filmed “Boyhood” over the course of 12 years for the sake of realism. Along with impeccable editing by Toni Froschhammer, “Perfect Days” moves at a slow pace but it’s never boring. You grow accustomed to Hirayama’s routine and it’s this assimilation that creates intrigue.
The biggest plot-point of the film occurs pretty late, about halfway through, when Hirayama is visited by his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), who has run away following a fight with her mother (Yumi Asō). As she accompanies him to work and even helps him, Hirayama is, at last, able to open up as they share their interests and find the common ground between their generational divide. After all, how many kids her age know what a cassette is? Arisa Nakano is excellent and her chemistry with Hashimoto is perfect, almost reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon”.
With beautiful cinematography by Franz Lustig, “Perfect Days” has these moments of exquisite beauty that make you feel so emotionally fulfilled, but there’s no roaring music or any over-the-top elements to hammer in what a whimsical scene you’re watching. Wenders just lets the moment happen and thank God for that. I don’t need a sweeping score to let me know when I’m supposed to feel enchanted. With that said, the soundtrack is great even though there’s no non-diegetic music in the film. Every time we hear songs in the film, it’s because our main character is listening to music thanks to his impressive collection of cassette tapes and Hirayama has a strong taste in music with tracks by Lou Reed, Van Morrison and Patti Smith being featured among other memorable artists.
I know that subtitled films aren’t always the most popular with American audiences but I would strongly implore everyone to see “Perfect Days”. It’s one of those films that will lift you higher than you’ve been in a long while and there’s too many amazing qualities about it to just turn the film away because it’s spoken entirely in Japanese. It’s a quiet film that reminds me just how meditative cinema can be. It can inspire us to reach inward and figure ourselves out so that we may give our very best in whatever we do, even if it’s cleaning toilets.
