Perfect Days: Wim Wenders's Cinematic Masterpiece of Quiet Living
- Meri Utkovska
- May 1, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 19
A few years down the line of the past, I fell in love with a Japanese word. I fell so deeply in love with what it represented, that in the attempt to become a part of its beauty I used it, paired with another Japanese word, as my Instagram name. That word is, of course, “komorebi”, which, literally translated, means “sunlight falling through trees”. For a short while in the stretched vastness of time, I was - or at least I tried to be - “magokoro komorebi”.
In Perfect Days, Wim Wenders’s latest story of simple living and quiet joy, which was originally named “komorebi”, the meaning of this word is taken beyond the literal sense - which is undoubtedly important - and gently folded in every frame of the film. It speaks mostly of a way of living - of a profound connection with nature and the world around us, of pausing and taking a moment to see and acknowledge the beauty of small, seemingly insignificant moments, made, with the rush of modern living and the rise of technology, all the more insignificant.
Hirayama, portrayed by amazing actor Kōji Yakusho, seems not only to be aware of this but also to have made it the essence of his own life.
Though Wim Wenders masterfully narrates Hirayama’s life as one of repetition and routine, he presents, parallelly, no two days as the same. There is always something new to be seen, always something else out of its original place and into another place altogether.
Hirayama is a public toilet cleaner in his 60s. Every day he wakes up at dawn, as morning slowly unfurls outside his window. In the purple light that fills his little apartment, only the sounds of a day yet to be entirely awakened enter. The gusts of the morning wind gently shake the tree leaves out of sleep. An elderly woman, one of morning’s first companions, sweeps the ones which have fallen to the ground with a bamboo broom. Hirayama gazes at the ceiling, leaving us wondering, ever so slightly, if he is staying in bed because he doesn’t want the day to start, or because he wants to enjoy the day coming into life. He gets up, finally, neatly folds his sleeping mattress, and puts it into a corner with his sheet and pillow. While he fluidly performs these movements, we can see his bookcase, filled with books, of course, on top of which there rests a little radio. The book which he’d been reading the other night before bed, is solemnly put next to his reading lamp and his reading glasses. He goes to the bathroom downstairs, washes his face, and shaves with a razor he’d most likely been using for ages. The next stop on his little journey is the kitchen. He takes a spray bottle and, on his tiptoes, again ascends to the second floor. The purple light still fills the room where he’d been sleeping. Opening a sliding door, he takes us into another room where on a table there lives his own little forest of saplings. He sprays each sapling carefully and flicks its leaves.
He then gets his blue work uniform on, and, once more, goes downstairs. From a shelf on the wall, from left to right, he gets his phone, a film camera, his keys, and some change from a small bowl. He opens the door, and, stepping outside, pauses to look at the sky. He smiles, as if saying “thank you” - to the sky, to the morning, to the distance. He gets a can of coffee from a vending machine in the parking lot and gets in his humble blue van.
His journey is always the same. He takes the same road. He stops at the same traffic lights. He looks at the Skytree, the world’s tallest tower. He passes the same river. He listens to really great music on cassette tapes - mostly American and British rock from the 60s and 70s, including The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Otis Redding, The Kinks, and some Japanese folk from the same period.
He cleans the same toilets - some, see-through until you lock the door from the inside, others red, green, and blue. Some are cubes, and others are circular. There are the ones that glow in the dark, and those in the shape of mushrooms. Even here, in the object of interest which remains the same throughout the film - in this case a public toilet -Wim Wenders tells a story of subtle change and simple beauty. He shows the public toilets from The Tokio Toilet project, which brings together 17 public toilets in the city’s Shibuya district, created by designers and architects such as Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma. They are absolutely wonderful pieces of architecture, certainly worthy of being seen.
While Hirayama performs his cleaning routine, sometimes a person rushes in to use the toilet, ignoring his little yellow sign. He then politely steps outside, and, saying nothing, calmly stands by the door, looking at the sky, or the playful children, or the homeless man who almost everybody ignores. Most people ignore him, too. But Hirayama doesn’t appear to mind. In fact, he seems to like his solitude. It gives him a chance to see, not only to look; to listen, not only to speak. Most importantly, perhaps, it gives him a chance to connect with the world in the subtlest, most powerful way there is - by being completely and profoundly present.
After his work is done, he takes the same road to get home. He visits the same public bath, eats the same dinner at the same place, and visits the same bar. He rarely speaks, even when spoken to. However, in the absence of words which Wenders has built in his character, we are still able, and very much so, to witness someone having a terribly rich experience. This flows into Hirayama’s nights, as he gets into bed and reads a book bought from the budget section in his local bookstore, and, after a while, turns off his reading lamp, and goes to sleep. We are then presented with a beautiful black-and-white story of images from the day that finishes. Fading in and out, hazy, dimmed, and fleeting, as dreams often are, they carry us into the next morning, which begins, mostly, like the one before.
The film portrays a simple way of life constructed of small moments of lightness - the interplay between the trees and the wind, the exchange of laughter with a small child, taking pictures of things one finds beautiful, reading great books, listening to even better music. It is a life not so much stripped of distractions, as it is abundant in richness of presence.
In a society which has an unending thirst for new things, gadgets, and sensations, Perfect Days is, unassumingly, perhaps, a nod to an alternative way of living - spiritually rewarding, silently joyful, and in harmony with the world.
Seeing how we have forgotten, almost completely, that life actually is in those small moments of being with each other, and taking care of each other, plants, trees, and animals, the film is an achingly beautiful, quiet reminder of the things that truly matter.
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