A Tokyo toilet cleaner meticulously goes about his daily routine in Perfect Days, which premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes film fest before playing the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. This meditative treatise on mindfulness on the nature of meaning in our lives is one of director Wim Wenders‘ most profound films, and one of very best movies of 2023.
Perfect Days stars Kōji Yakusho (Babel, The Third Murder) as Hirayama, the dedicated janitor who spends his day cleaning public toilets on the streets of Tokyo. His routine follows a strict pattern: he tidies his bed after waking up, brushes his teeth, waters his plants, and buys a coffee from the vending machine outside his home before driving into the city at the crack of dawn.
Director Wenders repeats these same events a number of times throughout Perfect Days, and each time he frames them from a slightly different perspective. Hirayama may be going through the same routine every day, but rather than focusing on its monotonous nature the director carefully observes every action from a new standpoint every day, culminating in a deeper understanding of his protagonist.
That’s a metaphor for the central theme in Perfect Days: Hirayama himself takes great pride in cleaning Tokyo’s public toilets, dedicating his full attention to every aspect of his job. His mindfulness at work is contrasted with a younger colleague (Tokio Emoto) who mops and scrubs while on the phone or lost in thought, dreaming of meeting his girlfriend after work (Aoi Yamada).
Hirayama’s daily life also includes small pleasures outside of work, including having lunch in the park amid the trees, visiting an onsen bath, an izakaya pub, or a more intimate restaurant run by a matronly hostess (Sayuri Ishikawa). He loses himself in each location, carefully and largely silently observing those around him, and enjoying the moment. Wernders’ camera follows his lead.
The routine of Perfect Days is threatened with the sudden appearance of niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), who appears to have run away from home. But rather than allow her presence to become a distraction, Hirayama opens his world to Niko, allowing her to find the same small pleasures in life that he has… if she is willing.
“Next time,” Hirayama tells Niko on a bike ride, when she asks if they can ride to the sea. “When is next time?” she asks.
“Next time is next time. Now is now.”
Through a brief scene with Niko’s mother, we subtly discover that there is likely some traumatic event in Hirayama’s past, and that he doesn’t need to clean the toilets of Tokyo; his family, at least, appears to come from wealth. And yet here he is, content in life, and as happy as he could be.
Perfect Days contains a profound message about living in the moment, and not letting past events or future possibilities cloud your enjoyment of the here and now. Yakusho, in every frame of the movie but mostly silent throughout, conveys this sense of spiritual appreciation largely through expression, and most deservedly earned a Best Actor award at Cannes.
You may not feel especially excited at the prospect of watching a movie about a man cleaning public toilets. But Perfect Days offers one of life’s greatest joys, appreciation for the present moment, if you happen to find yourself on its wavelength. And even if you’re not, and you find yourself in the cinema watching Hirayama carefully scrub each bowl, perhaps you’ll find something oddly satisfying about his dedication to the task… and the film’s dedication to present it to you.
Bonus: Hirayama enojys some classic (and purportedly valuable) cassette tapes while driving between Tokyo’s toilets, and Perfect Days‘ soundtrack is littered with hits from The Animals, Patti Smith, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Otis Redding, and of course Lou Reed, from whose Perfect Day the film derives its title.
