Wim Wenders’ ode to everyday wonder works best when its protagonist (Koji Yakusho), who could have been named Analog Man without raising anyone’s eyebrow rather than Hirayama, is simply going about his business, whether its cleaning the very stylish public toilets in Shibuya Ward, taking photos of tree canopies with his film-loaded camera, reading bunko paperbacks of classic novels in his 6-tatami room in Kameido, or puttering around the streets and expressways of Tokyo in his kei truck listening to cassettes of classic rock. These scenes are as immaculate as Hirayama’s morning toilet and ascetic digs, and convey a personality that feels natural and realistic, even if Wenders’ efforts to romanticize his life can sometimes feel precious. (An early scene is set to the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” as the actual morning sun appears over the Tokyo skyline.) Hirayama is a man who seems to have found peace with simple pleasures, meaning he’s most alive in his loneliness. It’s when Wenders injects other people into the proceedings that the movie becomes hard to accept. You understand the impulse. Hirayama is no misanthrope, but he’s obviously averse to the trappings of the social media age and would prefer keeping to his routine. If, as the saying goes, hell is other people, it’s because they demand attention from somebody who rejects it constitutionally. 

Wenders injects these interactions into the film as a means of trying to explain Hirayama’s isolation, which is not only unnecessary, but offensive. His younger toilet-cleaning colleague, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), drags Hirayama against his will to a used record shop because he thinks the older man can make some good cash selling his vintage cassettes. The scene does nothing except expose Takashi as an asshole, something that Hirayama, in his Wenders-granted purity, would prefer not to be made aware of. Later, after a fairly idyllic sequence of a day spent with Hirayama’s teenage niece (Arisa Nakano), who shows up on his doorstep unannounced, Hirayama’s sister (Yumi Aso) drops by in a chauffeur-driven sedan to take her home. So he’s from that kind of family! That explains everything! In fact, it explains too much. Can’t Hirayama remain a mystery? Now that we suspect he’s a dropout, he becomes more of a cliché. If we are meant to admire him for eschewing the digital life and appreciating the work he does, and seems to love, because it benefits society in a direct way, why does it have to be qualified by his rejection of his past? We never see him drink or smoke (his preferred beverages are canned coffee, milk, and ice water), but when he accidentally happens upon the mama-san (enka star Sayuri Ishikawa, who does her own version of “House of the Rising Sun”) of the little bar he visits once a week in the arms of a stranger, he bolts to the banks of the Sumida River with three cans of highballs, as if he’d just fallen off the wagon. Moreover, the stranger (Tomokazu Miura) inexplicably finds and confronts him in order to set things straight. Who asked him to?

It’s hard not to suspect that the choices made by Wenders and his co-scenarist, Takuma Takasaki, are designed to make the movie more conventionally story-driven; but in actuality they make it that much less cinematic. There’s more drama and feeling in Hirayama attacking a urinal with his brush and sponge than in any of his close encounters with humans, all of whom are caricatures. Wenders named the movie after one of Lou Reed’s greatest songs, a meditation on quotidian ecstasy that itself is perfect in its simplicity. Wenders should have left well enough alone. 

In Japanese. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002).

Perfect Days home page in English and Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Master Mind Ltd.

Perfect Days will be shown with English subtitles from Dec. 29 to Jan. 4 at Toho Cinemas Chanter at 10:15 am.