Nominated for best international feature film at the Oscars, Wim Wenders’ best work in recent times is poetic, beautiful and feather-light. Koji Yakusho is marvellous, as ever.
In a not-so-long-ago interview with James Mottram of NME, during the Cannes premiere of Perfect Days, Wim Wenders fondly recounts the time he brought Paris, Texas (1984) to the festival. He talks about how he personally carried the film reels from Paris, France, to the French Riviera city where the film was programmed for a screening. He talks about the physical heaviness of those seven reels, he talks about not having an assistant back in those times and he also talks about how he logged that weight all by himself. Not the welcome that a filmmaker of his stature, even at the time, deserves. Yet, Wenders describes that as a ‘beautiful day’.
Paris, Texas would be screened for the press that morning and for the public the same night, which is described by NME as ‘wonderful’. Wim Wenders' seminal desert drama, written by Sam Shepard, would win the top prize of Palme d’Or that year as well as a couple of other coveted awards, including the FIPRESCI and the Ecumenical Jury award. Since then, he has returned to the landmark festival several times with one film or the other.
So, it seems only fitting that a person like Wim Wenders would direct a film like Perfect Days. I say ‘person’ and not ‘filmmaker’ because that distinction is very important. For Perfect Days, Wenders returns to his spiritual home of Japan, the birthplace of Yasujirô Ozu, whose work he once said to be the most sacred treasure of cinema. He collaborates with Koji Yakusho, another treasure of Japanese cinema, for the film that is as contemplative and elliptical as Ozu’s work itself. And just like any true homecoming, Wenders revels in the joy of the ordinary and the simple with Perfect Days, painting a leisurely portrait with no sense of urgency or anxiety.
The Joy of Simplicity
Hirayama (Yakusho) is a reticent man in his 60s, someone who loves the clockwork. Every day, he wakes up just before dawn to first brush his teeth, spray water on his much-beloved plants and then slip into his overalls for work. There are two endearing smiles that he breaks into at least, once while tending to his plants and next possibly while catching the first sight of the sky at his door. The coffee from the vending machine, too, is mandatory. It’s a life of extremely small pleasures for the man who will spend the next few hours merrily scrubbing toilets across Tokyo.
But to term Hirayama’s interests and hobbies as ‘small’ or ‘simple’ would be to condescend. It would be the equivalent of saying ‘Oh, I wish I could make time for this, but I have something more important to do.’ In fact, Hirayama’s own colleague, the much younger and jaunty Takashi (Tokio Emoto), wonders why the man would be so diligent in cleaning the toilets. ‘They are going to get dirty again anyway,’ says Takashi. But for Hirayama, the joy is in living in the moment, doing a good job at it.
He has the time to sit in the park and grab lunch while looking high up at the tree branches that gently move in the wind. He has the time to connect with nature for short and adequate amounts of time every day, before heading back home for something similarly short and adequate. Hirayama goes to the same bathing house every day where he greets a nod to the same people. He then cycles to the same restaurant to grab an ice-cold drink and a small bite, before reading a book and calling it a night. The next day will be starkly identical.
And for Wim Wenders, the film resides in the pleasure of repetition and nowhere else. It’s the 10,000 hours logic that he applies to his protagonist, who has gotten so much better than others at living. Hirayama is wired to expect very little from life and is perhaps even beyond the conventions of success and glory. And when you keep things simple, every little thing around becomes a source of happiness — like playing tic-tac-toe with a mystery person through one of the toilets. Wenders is extremely well aware of the pitch and the rhythm of his film and he treats it almost like the event of listening to your favourite song on the stereo while driving around the city. More importantly, enjoying that small episode of our day-to-day life.
An Ode to Life
And music is such an important element of Perfect Days — there’s no score here, mind you, but a small collection of songs played (only on cassettes) by Hirayama in his van. There’s the House of The Rising Sun by The Animals he plays while driving to work one day and Otis Redding’s Sittin’ On The Dock of The Bay on another. On a particularly odd day, when a young girl kisses him on the cheek, Hirayama comes home to lie down and listen to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. And it helps that Koji Yakusho is simply brilliant.
Lou Reed is such a significant presence in the film and Perfect Days is as much a celebration of Wim Wenders’ life as it is of Hirayama. Wenders has said in the past that Reed (who made a cameo in his ’93 film Faraway, So Close!) and The Velvet Underground have saved his life — even Pale Blue Eyes features in the soundtrack. As another hat-tip, Wenders names Hirayama’s niece ‘Niko’, as an ode to Lou Reed’s former bandmate and German singer Nico. With the music, too, the 78-year-old master filmmaker makes no fuss about what he means — Hirayama will play the song that complements his mood and his spirit at the time.
There’s also room for deeper ruminations in the film and Wenders opens a small window into the subconscious of Hirayama. The otherwise affable and warm man must have an intense side as well, he says, and every time Hirayama closes his book to tuck himself in, we gather that he drifts into another realm. But Wenders doesn’t tell much except for a few cryptic visuals that have no colour and no defined texture. He only hints at what Hirayama possibly hides, like his past that is barely alluded to by his sister (Yumi Asō). Interestingly, in this vein, I wondered why the bleak and morbid story of The Terrapin, written by Patricia Highsmith, would be referred to more than once!
Perfect Days is being hailed as Wim Wenders’ best work of recent times and there are no second thoughts about this. Wenders has always had the time and the space for the supposed inconsequential elements, even when he was making films about bigger things. But here, he seems like he could simply relax and make a movie — much like how Jim Jarmusch did with Paterson (2016). Films about nothing aren’t easy renditions, by any means, but when there is sincerity behind the making, every little moment speaks out loud. Perfect Days is one such experience: it is poetic, beautiful and feather-light in weight.
Perfect Days was screened at the 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival as part of the ‘County in Focus – Germany’ section.
