Perfect Days

Director: Wim Wenders (Japan, Germany). Year of Release: 2023

Tokyo. A man wakes up in his spartan flat – he sleeps on a small mattress and the only real furniture is the full bookshelf at the side of the room. He goes through his getting up rituals, brushing his teeth, trimming his moustache, and putting on overalls with “The Tokyo Toilet” on the back. He then gets into his van, and puts in a cassette. This time it’s The House of the Rising Sun, but we’ll hear lots more 1960s-1970s relatively alternative music throughout the film.

We will also see a lot of Tokyo’s roadways, often multi-lane and on several vertical levels. The man, Hirayama, drives to the public toilets which he is paid to clean. First, he removes the rubbish, then he replaces the toilet rolls, before closing in on the tricky parts beneath the toilets, using a small mirror to check that he’s covered everything. Look, he cleans the toilets. This is what he does. There is not much else to say here.

The film must have been going for 15-20 minutes before Hirayama speaks. He’s found a child screaming, alone, and reunites it with its parent. After saying a couple of sentences to calm the kid down, he returns to his usual taciturnity. In his lunch break, he eats a sandwich and takes out an old analogue camera, with which he photographs the trees. He occasionally tells US-American tourists how they use the complicated toilets.

We meet Hirayama’s subordinate Takashi who rates everything on a scale of 0-10. Takashi thinks that he’s on a sure thing with a woman with dyed blonde hair who has just returned to town. Takashi persuades Hirayami first to lend him his van, and then takes him to a music store where he tries to get Hirayami to sell his precious cassettes. Look, he’s on a winner and needs support. In the end, Hirayami resists selling his music, but bungs Takashi some money anyway.

Takashi is not like his boss, and I think we are expected to disrespect him for this. He turns up late for work, and prefers playing on his phone to getting his hands dirty. Later in the film, he quits the job entirely. Hirayami calls his bosses, who tell him that he will have to take over the extra shifts. It is the only time that we see him anything less than gruntled, but he does the extra work anyway, even though he tells the people in charge that this is only for one day.

I’m sure that Wenders is trying to make a point about the dignity of labour – that we (by which I mean Wenders’ liberal friends) shouldn’t look down on toilet cleaners, because they read books too. All work is important – especially if it’s not you who actually has to clean toilets. And I’d bet that the audience for this film will include very few toilet cleaners. Ultimately, the film seems to be saying “we’re glad you do the work that we don’t want to do”.

At one stage, Hirayama’s estranged niece Niko arrives, after a fight with her mother, Hirayama’s sister. Niko accompanies Hirayama to his work, and later to a public bath. After initially bombarding her uncle with questions, she starts to get accustomed to his lifestyle. Then, after a couple of days, Niko’s mother returns in a chauffeur-driven car to take her back. There is a hint of some sort of fight with their father, Niko’s grandfather. The car speeds off. We don’t see Niko again.

What I have described so far are the highlights of the film. Nothing else of any importance happens. It is the sort of film that many critics love, especially those who don’t have to buy their own cinema tickets. To be fair, it’s also got a load of 10 star user reviews on IMDB: I’m sure that many of them used the word “Zen”. There surely is an audience for this sort of stuff. It’s just sad to report that I am not part of it.

If you run with Perfect Days, I’m sure it will enchant you, but if you don’t, it is just so fucking boring. The official description: “A janitor in Japan drives between jobs listening to rock music” almost oversells it. Yes, there is a lot of good, if not always great, music here from the Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes, through Patti Smith’s Redondo Beach and Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl to Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, but I can listen to all this at home if I want.

One thing that is never explored is why Hirayama would be listening to such music. It’s not hugely challenging, particularly for a middle aged Japanese man, but neither is it cutting edge, . There must be a story out there about what introduced Hirayama to this sort of music. Not that we ever get close to hearing this story. Similarly, he reads Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith, That’s interesting, isn’t it? Well, not enough to say anything about the authors.

Apparently, Perfect Days started as a short commissioned by Japanese authorities to show the world how great their toilets are, and the whole film has a certain corporate feel. I may be biased – I have mistrusted Wim Wenders ever since he started hanging out with Bono. In the end, Perfect Days really feels less of a celebration of the work of toilet cleaners than of the authorities which depend on their unquestioning dedication to carry on making profits.

We do not learn anything of any significance about Hirayama. He isolates himself from society – although it is unclear whether this is accident or design. He reads. He is apparently from a rich family, from which he has broken. But we don’t learn anything about the man, nor about what has brought him to where he is, whether he enjoys cleaning toilets or does it because you have to do something. Hirayama stands for whatever we want him to stand for.

But, sure go ahead, and make out that it’s a film about a single man overcoming life’s complications, or whatever, if that helps you sell newspapers.