Perfect Days (Wenders) review

 

It's by the sound, from the street, of a traditional twig broom brushing away leaves from the pavement at dawn that this man awakens. He methodically folds back his futon and duvet in his neat tatami room, gently puts away the book he abandonned last night next to his reading glasses... He walks downstairs to brush his teeth and climbs back upstairs with a water sprayer to water his plants in the adjacent room bathed in a sepia shade. He puts on his work overalls with "Tokyo Toilets" printed on the back. Without a word uttered so far, the personality of the character are established with a natural flow and a few hints... 

He proceeds down the stairs where he picks up one by one the objects carefully placed on a shelf. First his mobile phone after disconnecting it from an all-night charge. 2 sets of keys he pockets promptly. Some change. Only his watch remains on the shelf when he closed the door. The first thing he looks at when opening the entrance door is the sky. Next to his parking spot where his van awaits, he uses the change to get a canned coffee, branded "BOSS", from a vending machine, and goes on with his day. 

On the road, he chooses from his cassette tapes and puts on a retro American rock songs he enjoys. A semi-diegetic music, as the tune goes on uninterrupted for the spectator, while the shots cut up between side or 3/4 back close ups of the man, and the urban landscape in various parts of the city. The music stops as the van parks, leaving us with the natural soundscape of the morning city.

This opening sequence plants the setting in more shots than the usual contemplative film, but with the same attention to non-verbal languages and the absence of spoken clues. So begins his first day of work. One of many more to come, identical, repetitive, nonchalant. The same routine will open each new day, the very same way, with a few exceptions and variations. And each day he will clean up the architecturally prestigious public toilets of Shibuya in Tokyo, with his own hands, his brushes, his sponges, his wipes... 

Some are brutalist concrete walls with wooden planks imprints. Some are all white and shiny. Some are covered in timber slices. Others are entirely glazed with seethrough glass walls. These windows turn opaque unexpectedly (or thanksfully) when you shut the door. But all are equipped with the toilet technology Japan is famous for... Much different from the public toilets in the rest of the world. 

In fact this fiction was an open commission for Wim Wenders to find the best way to portray these creative urban furnitures, the toilets of Shibuya in Central Tokyo, neglected by the Covid period... He chose to frame this film within the original academic ratio (4:3) with a handheld camera to give it a natural feel and a modern look. Shooting it in Tokyo, 60 years after the last film of Yasujiro Ozu, his spiritual father in cinema, his soul looms over the making of "Perfect Days", even if none of Ozu's trademarks (low camera angle, pillow shots, frontal reverse shots...) are borrowed here. But I see personaly, more of a Japanese Jeanne Dielman because the film belongs more to the Contemporary Contemplative Cinema team than to its older, more classical, precursor... 

We perhaps find Ozu the most in the scenes representing the generation gap between Hirayama (lastname borrowed from the protagonist of An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu's ultimate production) and his niece, or even more at the bar where he talks to the owner like Ozu's protagonists do. 

Hirayama, a secretive and taciturn character, spends two weeks worth of a repetitive mundane routine, as described in the opening sequence, that we see unfolding at a faster pace every new day coming. Each day of the week is perfectly structured, yet variations on the pattern generate each day mini-disturbances that will finish each night in unexpected ways. If during daytime he enjoys contemplating the light between the leaves, captured with an antiguated film camera, his dreams at night are populated by light patterns and memories of the day, in black and white, like his photographies. Actually, the film was shot in 17 days, with a second unit crew, led by Wim's wife, Donata, who filmed the dreamscape sequences.

Komorebi (木漏れ日) is a poetical Japanese word meaning "sunlight leaking through the leaves", it is a fugacious moment that doesn't last. It is a fleeting memory that Hirayama desperately strive to catch with his numerous photographs, some failed, some deemed worthy of storage in a tin box labelled by the month of the year.