How do you make your days perfect? C’mon, perfect day, as an everyday concept? Are you kidding? Our life files wouldn’t have many of them. Put a different perspective to it, be a Zen looking at the sky and trees, breathe in fresh air under the greyish tint of sun rays, Immerse in and be the best at your work, read a few pages of a second sale book daily, and sleep like a baby. This isn’t a motivational note but the everyday life of a modest Tokyo Toilet cleaner Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho). And the director Wim Wenders builds it lavishly taking an hour of a two-hour film. As Hirayama has no change in his schedules of work life and personal life in a bustling Tokyo city, why there is a hurry? He pauses at every sight that fills him, the same sky. the same big tree, the saplings he saves and nurtures from the park, his clicks, and the same sandwich he eats daily. Everything is his. Nobody taxes him for anything. Is that what you call an absolute spiritual freedom?
Oscar-nominated for best international feature Perfect Days thrives on its 60s and 70s American and British rock and Kōji Yakusho’s sparkling mind and heart. If you ever wonder how can an actor display his beaming inner world onscreen with no filters, Kōji Yakusho in Perfect Days is the answer. With his rare words and soulful smile, subtle emotions, and the only loud one in his sister’s presence which suggests some bits of his past, Kōji takes you to another world off the digital buzz.
Komorebi is the Japanese word that closely defines Perfect Days. This film is also Wim Wenders’s tribute to the pristine toilets in Japan. Watch PD, you will love them and the meditative modes of Hirayama cleans them. In the seven famous habits of the Japanese, Toilet cleaning is primary.
Nothing ever changes, that doesn’t make sense. When Hirayama tells this to a stranger he just met and played a shadow tag, it spins the entire plot. The shadows within. Perfect Days is a well-crafted zen journey you might want to follow someday.