Perfect Days

Stunning. I felt everything. Thank you, Wim Wenders. I think at its core, Perfect Days is a movie about (is it too cliché to say?) life itself, our presence in it, and the ability to see the beauty in everything. In these 2 hours, we see a man experience the wide spectrum of emotions and experiences his life has to offer, captured in crystal 4:3 (reason being that Wenders was the apprentice of Yasujiro Ozu, who loved this format, along with frequent collaborator Franz Lustig). Hiyarama, played graciously by Koji Yakusho, oscillates from states of pure delight and whimsy to sadness and dejection. From nostalgic and hopeful to contemplative and distant. In this slice-of-life story, we grow so close to this man that I left the Anjelika Film Center wanting someone who isn't even real to live an even happier, more wholesome and wealthier life than I am. We see him beam an ear-to-ear grin every time he leaves his apartment and looks to the sky - no matter the weather. From watching and taking photos of trees - his best friends - during his lunch break. Or when he plays tic-tac-toe with a stranger - or better yet jumps for joy playing shadow-tag with one. He's not some Buddha though - he second-guesses himself sometimes, although not always in the wrong way. His younger co-worker, who he assumed was naive and abrasive, and a kid just trying to score, is actually a sweet guy who looks out for the developmentally disabled. On the other hand, he refuses to visit his absent-minded father in his nursing home before hugging his estranged sister and niece and breaking into tears. Speaking of the Buddha though, it's also a story of Zen. Hiyarama is a wage laborer. He has the same morning routine every day and goes to clean toilets for The Tokyo Toilet (which, by the way, is a real group of public bathrooms in Tokyo that were redesigned by 16 different architects from around the world from 2020-2023). He makes sure everything he does in his routine is done with care - from scrubbing the urinals, floors, and bidet spouts, to arranging toilet paper elegantly. He would have you believe he could make anything beautiful like the trees. Even something as undesirable as cleaning public restrooms. But you can tell he had to learn this - learn to separate the joys from the melancholies, as exhibited in his lonely moments. It's moments like these that lend themselves flawlessly to film. And furthermore, it's why I love its subtlety. *今度は今度。今は今。 "Kondo wa kondo, ima wa ima." "Next time is next time, now is now."*