Movie Review: Blue Skies and "Perfect Days" Help Stave Off the Greys
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
Why is it considered a compliment to say of a movie, “That time just flew by”? In recent years, I have come to value cinema for its ability to make me feel time. Because I think that’s ultimately cinema’s great power: it allows us to stop - really stop - and grasp that which usually slips through our fingers.
For many of us, time spent “going through the motions”—time spent in the drudgery of one’s job, for example—is time we’d rather just pass us by. Keep your head down, get through the day—isn’t that something we tell ourselves? We all do what we have to do to survive, of course, but is “getting through” a day any way to appreciate or enjoy one’s day?
When Kōji Yakusho’s Hirayama begins his days—his “perfect days”— he departs his home not with head down, but with head up, as to acknowledge the light that graces the sky. He seems to greet and give thanks to each day. And even though he lives a life of repetition and routine—days of monotonous labour, of return visits to reliable old locales—Hirayama doesn’t strike one as downtrodden. On the contrary, Hirayama is chipper, attentive, even visibly curious; someone middle-aged who can still find wonder in everyday moments.
Hirayama works as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo, and though he takes pride in his rigorously efficient scrubbing, he also seems to cherish every pause or break he is afforded. When someone needs to relieve themselves and he has to step out of a lavatory, it’s not a matter of him waiting out the clock, but an opportunity for him to bask in some time he can call his own. Keeping his head cocked skywards, Hirayma uses his breathers to do exactly that: breathe, and watch the way the sunlight filters through the tree branches. Observing him, we see how a warm, personal splendour can be culled from even the most banal of instances. The trick, one could surmise, is to not let such instances flit by in an instant.
Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days isn’t telling you how to live; the film is showing you how someone else has figured out to live, parsing out in a measured but poetic sequencing scenes from a stabler side of life. At the same time, to watch Hirayama go about his routines for two hours is to attune yourself to his circadian rhythms, to his perception of time. We are “transposed” into his story in this way, the two hours composing the film becoming a two hours that we can tacitly feel.
Wenders and editor Toni Froschhammer take us through the week-or-so depicted in Perfect Days in what could be called “unhurried” fashion. That said, shots rarely overstay their welcome—Perfect Days is “slow cinema” only by nature of its subject matter. Using what could be called an economical approach, Wenders gives scenes of quiet labouring as much breadth as scenes of dialogue and “drama”. Scenes when Hirayama plays his cassettes, meanwhile, act as musical interludes, and help the give the film rhythmic thrust. And segueing us from one day to another are brief, impressionistic flashes of Hirayama’s dreams, which see Wenders veer into more experimental territory.
Overall, though, the film seems content floating along in the elegant “normalcy” of Hirayama’s days. The film’s music is purely diegetic, and the cinematography makes use of soft, natural lighting. Yakusho’s benevolent performance is delivered effortlessly, but it speaks to veiled depths, and extensive character development.
Something quietly devastating reveals itself in Perfect Days, and though you could say that it is shoehorned into the plot—Hirayama’s patterns are disrupted by the sudden appearance of an estranged family member (where have we seen this before?)—this feels like the point. Our hardships always rear themselves at inopportune times, times that feel frustratingly “forced.”
Hirayama seems to understand the undulations of life better than most people—his young co-worker, by comparison, lets hardships throw him into wild, melodramatic displays. But Hirayama finds steadiness simply by holding to what makes him happy: his favourite cassette tapes, his saplings, his photo-taking. Because the other consistencies that lurk just outside the comforts of our lives are the changes, the frustrations, and the pains that always find ways to rush in. We can’t stave the hardships off forever, so we might as well just appreciate the perfect days that we can get. While we can get them.
In another way: time is precious. And Perfect Days is a movie that pays tender, detailed tribute to this sentiment. Don’t let it fly by.