What a gift to spend a handful of days and nights following Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a single, middle-aged janitor who cleans the public bathrooms around Tokyo, in Perfect Days, a meditative character study from director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas). Without much fuss, Wenders’ camera watches Hirayama’s ritualistic daily routines—waking to the sound of a neighbor’s sweeping, cleaning sinks and toilets, visiting a bathhouse, dinner in the subway station, reading Faulkner before bed—though it also pauses to take in the little wonders that Hirayama notices: the dancing of light through a window, the play of shadows against a wall. These things make Hirayama smile; in fact, most things do, including the sky each day when he steps outside and looks upward. Yet Hirayama is no naive simpleton, something that’s clear in Yakusho’s smartly soulful (and mostly nonverbal) performance. He experiences difficulties and sadness, but the brilliance of the screenplay, which Wenders wrote with Takuma Takasaki, is the way it doesn’t inflate the interruptions to Hiryama’s happiness (a pushy coworker, the appearance of an estranged sister) into contrived drama. The disruptions come, then go, leaving Hirayama softly changed, yet returning to the comfort of his routine. These aren’t perfect days, of course, yet for a few seconds here and there they can feel like it.
(2/14/2024)
