Perfect Days

Randomly picked. When reading through the comments I was able to summerize somewhat the concept behind the film. Before laying out my initial analysis I'd like to give some context. William Faulkner is an american writer(novelist). He was recognized as a novelist rather than a philosopher but after some reading I found something interesting regarding that topic. He was an existentialist and humanist "philosopher" way before they were part of any kind movement in the middle 1900s - He was the one who laid out the somewhat softened ground to philosophers such as Sartre, Camus etc. > In his books sometimes his protagonists were from the blue collar layer of society just like Hirayama. But there were protagonists with the setting of a fallen aristocrat which is interesting because Hirayama's sister seems to be have a higher place in society than Hirayama so it's possible that he is also a "fallen" one too Considering the structure of the film the first half of it was to show how he's(Hirayama) tied to his daily rutines everytime(here he was "canceled" from it because of Takashi, and after his return to home he was tired the next day because of last night's "going out of script" thing). In the second part he was put to test by "life" itself whether his technique of repetative rutines really works that well or not. Hirayama is depressed, and he's trying to live with his past(The first book Hirayama was reading were William Faulkner's book which had the word "Kage" (かげ) in it - this could point to how Hirayama is struggling to live with his past and such as Mama's former husband said: "Shadows, do they get darker when they overlap?". Not to mention that sometimes William Faulkner touched upon this topic too with familar tools such as shadows but I'm not that sure about this) through casual habits that seems like normal "everyday" things but in my opinion those are compulsive habits(or something like repetative compulsory habits). He had problems with his sister, probably his father is suffering from dementia and Hirayama couldn't cope with this and left his family, maybe that's why his sister is considered to be "from another world than him"(It two sided because she's from another world in societal means too). At the end he looked happy, but after a while he almost cried(not once but thrice if I remember correctly). The message of the film is a very optimist existentialist one, and it's wholesome in every way. There are multiple details that points to existentialism as a whole such as .: Hirayama's obsession with plants as of plants penetrate through the constant and never changing soil; How Hirayama always looked at the Skytree because it pierced the sky that always there, no matter where you're looking; How the homeless man always looked up and streched his arms up just like a plant in the sunlight; Hirayama's every day job is the ultimate one because why whould he clean those with such work moral when few hours later someone dump a big one there, resetting the cycle again. Very good film