Perfect Days

In this triumphant return to narrative film, Wim Wenders tackles life’s little details – mess and all – with his trademark meditative movement.

Hirayama wakes at dawn, tends to his plants, dons his blue jumpsuit, then spends his days transforming the Sisyphean labour of cleaning Tokyo’s public toilets into a meticulous, even poetic practice of appreciating life’s small pleasures. In his van, he listens to mid-century American classic songs; on his lunch break, he photographs patterns of light through trees; in the evenings, he inhales great novels. And then he dreams … While Hirayama keeps himself carefully aloof from interpersonal entanglements, he nonetheless folds everyday acts of care and empathy into his routine.

Hailed as the godfather of slow cinema, Wenders (whose film Anselm also screens at this year’s MIFF) has spent recent years making documentaries; Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (MIFF 2018) has even been hailed as his career’s crowning achievement. Yet as a sublime, deceptively simple portrait of existence and joy, Perfect Days is perhaps the most perfect distillation of the 77-year-old filmmaker’s signature style and themes – even winning the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes for Koji Yakusho. Whereas Wenders’s other protagonists strove to outrun their restless yearning and nostalgia, Hirayama finds a tantalisingly enigmatic inner peace.

“Disarming in its absence of cynicism, unmistakably the work of a mature filmmaker thinking long and hard about the things that make life meaningful … Ineffably lovely.” – Hollywood Reporter