‘Perfect Days’: Japan’s Oscars Submission Is One You Don’t Want to Miss
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.