Watch This Movie When You Forget How To Enjoy The Little Things In Life
Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days might be the Perfect Film.
Released back in 2023 at Cannes, where it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and Best Actor Award, I still haven’t seen anything since then that can top it.
Stylistically, its simplicity is just kind of… mesmerizing, the same way you can watch TikToks of people packing perfectly folded clothes into sharp, sleek suitcases. Protagonist Hirayama lives an immaculate life, doing what many international audiences might consider one of the world’s dirtiest jobs—cleaning public toilets—but even then, we’re in Japan, where modern design and cleanliness make even a restroom look like a work of art.
The film takes us through Hirayama’s routine several times, first introducing us to the novelty of its simple pleasures like a uniform hung and ready to be worn, curated cassette tapes, lunch al fresco, appreciating your surrounding through photography, a tic-tac-toe game with a stranger, or a good book waiting for you at home, and then pulls us deeper into the emotional depths swirling beneath the surface of all this consistency, and Kōji Yakusho manages to bring this robust character to life with the barest bones dialogue imaginable.
He is acting, in the most literal sense, through action. The meticulous way he cleans each restroom. The intention with which he approaches the most repetitive and mundane tasks all call to mind how present each of us may be (or not) in our own lives. We find ourselves envying Hirayama, and his defiant refusal to participate in the modern rat race and boycott of most modern technology, wondering how much simpler our lives could be if we too exercised our own agency and just walked away from it all.
Of course, that’s easier contemplated than done, but maybe, like Hirayama’s niece Niko, we too can be changed for the better just through the act of being a bystander to his way of life. We can carve out quiet little moments that give our life meaning and satisfaction. We can show up in the world, whether professionally, or in our leisure time, with a certain level of pride and dignity, even if that just manifests in the way we carry ourselves and wear our clothes.
Hirayama maintains that self-assuredness, but is no stranger to life’s hardships. When he gives the money he has left to his colleague, Takashi, he is forced to sell a prized possession in order to afford gasoline for his van. When his sister comes to pick up Niko, we get a glimpse into his strained family life. And we see through moments I don’t want to spoil, that he has feelings much deeper than he may express verbally, or in public, but when he does express the full range of human emotion in the film’s final scenes, it completely nails the experience of being alive and navigating adulthood.
Uplifting, while comforting our quietest moments of despair, this is the movie you have to watch when you lose touch with life’s simplest pleasures.
