SCREEN SHOT - Perfect Days

After Covid, Wim Wenders was invited to document The Tokyo Toilet project where seventeen new lavatories were to be redesgned by sixteen creators from around the world. What started as a documentary idea eventually became this film. Shot in the Shibuya district of Tokyo where these stylishly upgraded lavatory facilities are. The film features many of them, each one very distinct in its style and strikingly original. He co-wrote the screenplay with Takuma Takasati, and it was filmed over seventeen days. So it has a semi documentary feel, that won it Best International Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards. It is one of Wenders best films, simple in its execution and humanity.

The central character Hirayama, (Koji Yakusho ) works as a toilet cleaner in the Shibuya district. His life is organised and filled with regular routines. He organises the things he needs daily on a shelf by the apartment exit, regularly waters his Acer cuttings, sleeps, reads paperbacks, has a large collection of cassettes, doesn't have a computer, is not on social media and takes black a white photos on an old film camera. He appears to be a cultured man, who prefers to live life entirely as though he exists in another era, whilst he works cleaning these ultra swish paragons of 21st century modernism. He lives a life of quiet simplicity. Extolling to his niece his - now is now, next time is next time - philosophy. But gradually as the film progresses modern life begins to poke its head into his life, to disrupt this carefully maintained equilibrium, Though he has chosen a separate self contained life, a series of encounters awakens a need in him for human company.

This film has often been mistakenly presented as a peon to living a simple zen style life within an urban setting. It is only this in part. It also demonstrates how such a lifestyle can only be maintained as long as you have complete control over your conditions. That nothing ever intrudes to remind you that you could live your life another way if you wanted. By the end of the movie Hirayama is a man who allows himself to feel his own regrets that his life has turned out the way it did. That his chosen lifestyle has protected him from experiencing some of the consequences and pain of his past.

Koji  Yakusho is utterly brilliant in this film, well deserving of his Best Actor award from the Cannes Film Festival. His actual spoken dialogue is sparse. For much of the film he says very little, often just gestures or grunts in response. Yet his open face and expressiveness, tell you volumes about the interior life of the man, his real love of popular music, his silent appreciation for people and favourite places. Every night when Hirayama sleeps his dreams are full of beautiful black and white shadows cast across textural surfaces, with echoing scratching sounds in the background. At the end of the movie Wenders posts a definition of the Japanese term  Komorebi - which means taking delight in light and shadows filtered through the leaves in the present moment. Which reminds you that Hirayama regularly takes photos of light shining through the tree canopy

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8