Perfect Days (2023)
Directed by Wim Wenders
Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
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What critics say influenced Perfect Days
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)
Directed by Chantal Akerman
Visuals Themes
The first hour of the film essentially boils down to sequencing that’s clearly inspired by Chantal Akerman’s film, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. While Hirayama has certainly held and excelled at this job for a while, he seems deeply content. And although it may beckon the viewer to wonder just how he ended up in the position he finds himself in, more likely than not, it doesn’t really matter.
This fascination with the most ordinary daily rituals inevitably recalls Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
“I like to think you killed a man, it's the romantic in me,” Captain Renault says to Rick Blaine in “Casablanca,” speculating as to what Rick has been running away from.
Tokyo is captured as a pristine metropolis, with focus on the constantly utilized network of roadways (reminiscent of sequences utilized in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, 1972).
It's a scene that rivals Bob Hoskins' performance at the end of The Long Good Friday, albeit creating vastly different tones.
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There's a bit of Vittorio de Sica's micro-texture-minded sensibility swimming around in it, and the impression that Wenders imparts of Hirayama as a god-like figure who surveys the rest of us flawed humans from afar brings to mind the protagonist of Wings of Desire.
Wenders—who cowrote the script with Takuma Takasaki—is one of those filmmakers you’ve got to keep your eye on. His 1987 Wings of Desire, made shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, told the story of an angel, played by a soulfully leonine Bruno Ganz, who observes the lives of humans from a high perch above Berlin, only to find himself longing to become human too. The film became a touchstone for a whole generation, speaking to the restlessness and longing that young people of the Reagan era believed to be exclusive to them, although of course it wasn’t.
Perfect Days is directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, an artist whose greatest films (Paris, Texas or Wings of Desire, to name just two) explore the quiet, unspoken moments of life and regret and second chances.
In Wenders’s new film Perfect Days, his blithest and most uplifting since Wings of Desire (1987), his hero Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) is reading The Wild Palms as well, along with other books, including a collection of Patricia Highsmith’s short stories.
Wim Wenders is a titan of European cinema with acclaimed German language films like Kings of the Road, Wings of Desire and Wrong Move, he is perhaps best known for his English language film Paris, Texas.
Wenders, making his best fictional feature in years and a movie every bit as magnificent as his Berlin-set 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire, goes zen himself with his handling of Perfect Days. He's happy with cinematographer Franz Lustig (who also lensed his most-recent documentary Anselm) largely peering on documentary-style patiently and gracefully, taking in the ins and outs of Hirayama's days as serenely as Hirayama navigates them.
Shot by Franz Lusting (who has lensed several late period Wenders features, including 2004’s Land of Plenty and 2005’s Don’t Bother to Knock), Tokyo is captured as a pristine metropolis, with focus on the constantly utilized network of roadways (reminiscent of sequences utilized in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, 1972).
In his most successfully realized narrative feature in years, Wim Wenders returns to the road in Perfect Days, a thematic motif upon which he built his early career with his thematic trilogy, Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1974), and Kings of the Road (1975).
Wim Wenders is a titan of European cinema with acclaimed German language films like Kings of the Road, Wings of Desire and Wrong Move, he is perhaps best known for his English language film Paris, Texas.
In his most successfully realized narrative feature in years, Wim Wenders returns to the road in Perfect Days, a thematic motif upon which he built his early career with his thematic trilogy, Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1974), and Kings of the Road (1975).
Wim Wenders is a titan of European cinema with acclaimed German language films like Kings of the Road, Wings of Desire and Wrong Move, he is perhaps best known for his English language film Paris, Texas.
I don’t think I’m spoiling or depreciating the loveliness of “Perfect Days” when I say that it’s very much the work of an older director. Not in terms of energy (of which there’s plenty), but rather an experienced attitude. Where Wenders’ unforgettable road movies of yore (“Kings of the Road,” “Paris, Texas”) wandered memorably in contemplating our place in the world, this film beams and buzzes inside its closed loop with the hard-won wisdom of acceptance.
Not to get too gross or salty about it, but I’d say, given “Kings of the Road,” I don’t think Wenders owes us anything in the shit department. (In this late ‘70s film the lead character relieves himself on a beach on screen; the action is depicted naturalistically and nonchalantly, in long shot; nevertheless, one commenter on Roger’s review pronounced the scene as “sick.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.)
Perfect Days is directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, an artist whose greatest films (Paris, Texas or Wings of Desire, to name just two) explore the quiet, unspoken moments of life and regret and second chances.
In a career that has attempted everything from powerful love stories that transcend incredible distances (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas), masterful documentaries (Buena Vista Social Club, Pina), and all matter of cinematic experiments, Perfect Days might be Wenders’ most lovely and vital work in decades, centered around a remarkably restrained and Cannes-winning performances from Koji Yakusho.
That would be Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker who over his fifty-plus year career has become known for a wide variety of films, from arthouse wonders like Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, to insightful documentaries like Buena Vista Social Club and even as recently as the 3D artist picture Anselm.
Much as with Harry Dean Stanton’s performance in Paris, Texas, the film belongs to Koji Yakusho, who captures Hirayama’s satisfaction with his mundane life and the gradual shift in emotions as he opens himself to those around him.
Wenders clearly has an affinity with Japanese cinema, having made the documentary film Tokyo-Ga, on the legendary auteur Yasujirō Ozu, the feel and warmth of his films is certainly present here.
Perfect Days marks Wenders' first Japanese narrative feature, and as we've seen in 1985's Tokyo-Ga, Wenders has a deep love for the culture and the films that have come from this area—particularly the work of Yasujiro Ozu.
Almost four decades after retracing the footsteps of Ozu in the documentary Tokyo-Ga, Wenders returns to the Japanese capital to make his best narrative feature in years. Enriched with a vivid sense of place, the film takes its cue from the Japanese word komorebi, which describes the shimmering play of light and shadows through the leaves of a tree, every flickering movement unique.
At first glance, it is hard not to see this as Wenders honoring Japanese giant Yasujirō Ozu again; Wenders already made the tender and warmhearted “Tokyo-Ga” in 1985 about the master filmmaker.
In a career that has attempted everything from powerful love stories that transcend incredible distances (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas), masterful documentaries (Buena Vista Social Club, Pina), and all matter of cinematic experiments, Perfect Days might be Wenders’ most lovely and vital work in decades, centered around a remarkably restrained and Cannes-winning performances from Koji Yakusho.
That would be Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker who over his fifty-plus year career has become known for a wide variety of films, from arthouse wonders like Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, to insightful documentaries like Buena Vista Social Club and even as recently as the 3D artist picture Anselm.
Since the 1999 release of Buena Vista Social Club, Germany’s prolific Wim Wenders has found more success in documentaries than narrative features.
In his most successfully realized narrative feature in years, Wim Wenders returns to the road in Perfect Days, a thematic motif upon which he built his early career with his thematic trilogy, Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1974), and Kings of the Road (1975).
The Kinks have an important place in Wenders’ filmography; in his classic “The American Friend,” the doomed framer played by Bruno Ganz sings along softly with that group’s “Too Much on My Mind” in his atelier during one of his imperfect days.
In a career that has attempted everything from powerful love stories that transcend incredible distances (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas), masterful documentaries (Buena Vista Social Club, Pina), and all matter of cinematic experiments, Perfect Days might be Wenders’ most lovely and vital work in decades, centered around a remarkably restrained and Cannes-winning performances from Koji Yakusho.
Not all of Wenders' films over the years—and he's made many—have had that kind of impact, but documentaries like the 2011 Pina (about choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch) and the more recent Anselm (about the sobering, ruminative work of painter Anselm Kiefer), both rendered in 3D, are proof of his adventurous spirit and his eye for evocative details.
Inspired by their beauty (one has different colored transparent stalls which turn opaque when occupied, another projects glowing patterns while yet another looks like a grouping of modernist huts), Wenders instead, along with cowriter Takuma Takasaki, came up with an idea for a fictional film about a man who cleans these toilets for a living, his lead character's name taken from Ozu's “Tokyo Story,” a film dear to Wenders' heart.
…the minimalistic storyline brings to mind films such as Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and Celine Song’s Past Lives, with their reliance on poetic visual language over dialogue. Zhao’s Oscar-winning film depicts a similar character study of the everyman/woman, and a contemplative appreciation for the small things in life.
So was Paterson and Jarmusch's film before that one, Only Lovers Left Alive, though those are thornier works.