"Perfect Days": A fascinating ode to life's little joys!

The film "Perfect Days", by the famous Wim Wenders, was filmed in a Japanese-German co-production."Perfect Days" received numerous praises from the audience and critics after its premiere in Cannes, and the actor Koji Yakusho received the award for the best male role at the screening. The film takes place in Japan, and the main character is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, who in his free time pursues his passion for music, books, and photographing trees. He comes across a series of unexpected encounters that show viewers what his past hides.

The plot 

The focus of the film is the daily rituals of Hirayama (Jakuso), a city cleaning worker who patiently, paying a lot of attention to details, cleans every stain in public toilets. Just in case, he even uses mirrors on the bar so that he doesn't miss anything. Our hero starts every day in the same way: by getting up, watering the plants he cares for, putting on his uniform and drinking coffee from a can, then driving through the still-sleeping metropolis to the first of many public toilets. We follow him on a long work route, after a final bathing ceremony in one of the public baths and a daily treat with a simple meal and a glass of hot water in a fast food restaurant in the underground labyrinth of a subway station.

In between all those well-trodden paths of the daily route, Hirayama listens to rock classics in the truck on original tapes that perfectly reflect the director's musical taste. The Velvet Underground (or simply Lou Reed, whose hit "Perfect Day" is pluralized to define the continuous feeling of satisfaction with the simple life of the main protagonist), Patti Smith, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, The Kinks, The Animals, but also the sounds of Japanese alternative bands from the eighties - fill the cabin of the vehicle, bringing a smile to the driver's face.

A hundred-year-old tree

His best friend is a hundred-year-old tree in the park where he eats snacks every day, and where he bows to another elderly loner, actually the legendary Japanese dancer and actor Min Tanaka. Every day, Hirayama directs the lens of his analog camera at the imposing old tree, to capture the streaks of light that, for him, always refract differently through the thick canopy. At night, he vividly visits it in dreams that appear in the form of black-and-white, experimental, impressionist films in which letters, notes, shadows, and nature merge into the coded language of lovers of nature, literature, and music.

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Post By: Vanessa F.