When recommending Perfect Days to anyone, I usually only say “It’s a film about a man who cleans toilets in Tokyo”. That’s true— he cleans toilets in the beginning, and he is still cleaning toilets in the end. What resonated with me the most was the quiet joy in Koji Yakusho’s performance, the vibrancy of the soundtrack to which it is paced, and the anti-climatic structure of the film. Perhaps the film resonated with me so strongly because right now I crave quietness, for less, less, less while the world around us keeps demanding more: work more, work harder, do more, see more, post more, read more, entertain more. Taking the time to watch a two-hour film about a man who cleans toilets seems to be, in itself, an act of defiance.

In the film, we are introduced to Hirayama, a man whose job is to clean the public toilets in Tokyo. He wakes up every morning, grabs a drink from the vending machine, gets in his van and gets to work— diligently, with great care. During his lunch break, he sits in the park with a sandwich and takes pictures of the shadow patterns that the sun creates as it shines through the leaves— there’s a word for it in Japanese it’s Komorebi. His afternoons and evenings are equally predictable, he has dinner, he reads a few pages and he goes to bed. As we repeatedly watch his routine and accompany his van rides to the rhythm of Lou Reed, Patti Smith and other rock bands in English, we get a glimpse into his inner life. The movie is a masterly done character study imbued with meaning by its quietness and pulsating emotion barely shown on the surface by Koji’s restrained performance— even though we get hints of his previous life— a privileged life riddled with family conflicts— the plot does not really alter: this is the life Hirayama chose, and it is not a way of living, but a way of seeing the world.

In a way, I could not help but think of Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson as a kindred film, belonging to the cinema of the everyday, the ordinary or rather the infraordinary. Both characters lead semi-secluded lives, partaking in the workings of society with simple yet essential jobs, like a bus driver and a toilet cleaner. Jobs that inform their creative pursuits, poetry and photography, and jobs through which they are able to experience the world with joy. 

While capitalist routine blinds us to the marvellous in the every day and limits our full human experience, Wenders’ screenwriting, with this constant construction of meaning for the characters by defying the traditional plot or recipe movies’ is important in the light of modern filmmaking. What does cinematic language mean in the age of special effects? How do we redefine the plot? A rather downcast Wenders mentioned in an interview last year, “Now there’s a lot of people who love the business of movies. And the business must not be the primary focus, although they do go along with each other. Business is driving it all today. Series, franchises, remakes – or ‘recipes’ for films. It disappoints me, the success of recipe-made movies.”

I keep thinking about Perfect Days amid the constant uncertainty of my life and the world at the moment, as I navigate a job market that expects us to surrender our souls along with our time, a social environment that values perception and performance over experience. Perhaps it is not the time to come out with new ideas or do more, but rather to look harder. As Proust would say, “Mystery is not about travelling to new places, it is about looking with new eyes”. Hiroyama seems to have grasped the perfection and equal grandeur of even the seemingly ordinary and has made it his mission to appreciate it all: the light through the leaves, a walk, a sunset, a bicycle ride, reading a few pages, which makes Perfect Days a life-affirming manifest about life and cinema.

Perfect Days is now streaming on Mubi. Have you watched it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!