I’d like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and tie me to earth. I’d like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say, “Now.”
Bruno Ganz as the angel Damiel in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987)
It’s hard to enjoy the lives we have. Like we’re hardwired to be restless. To want more. To desire something greater. The problem is that there’s no limit to our desire or to our restlessness, and this intrinsic wanting combined with cultural ideals of what it means to be worthy of happiness or respect drive us down these paths of dissatisfaction. The real challenge is to find comfort in the present, and to appreciate the minutia of everyday existence. To find ways to take pride in every action you take, because anything can be worth our pride and effort, and these little moments can be our solace and our joy. Dream of tranquility, of peace, of hazy memories and liminal impressions of harmony, and find the fleeting windows of introspection our days allow us to live that tranquility. “Next time is next time,” our often silent protagonist Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) tells his niece with a soft smile, “now is now.”
In Wings of Desire, Damiel is an angel suffering from the same existential dismay as the rest of us, only desiring to feel the contradictory chaos of menial mortality, to find ways to have fleeting joy that can truly be appreciated because it has an expiration date. Perfect Days is the embodiment of the tranquility Damiel seeks, a life where the warm sun dancing off of leaves and across sparkling reflective surfaces is as important and beautiful as the stormy evening sky covering the asphalt in a dazzling shimmer. A life where each day and each moment is fully absorbed and appreciated for what it is, an ephemeral instant that would pass us by never to return if we weren’t present to smile at the simplicity of its peacefulness.
The quiet solitude that makes up Perfect Days, primarily its first half, almost forces the viewer to soak in life in the same way as Hirayama does. Like the tedious monotony of Jeanne Dielman (1975) but stripped of the oppressive stasis and replaced with gentle growth and Lou Reed cassettes, we follow his daily life as a public toilet cleaner in Shibuya. He wakes up each morning, neatly folds his bedspread, gets dressed, and carefully mists the group of little saplings under a humming purple UV light in the adjacent room. He gets the same coldbrew coffee out of the vending machine every day and drinks it on his drive to work, enjoying a few minutes of solitude with his rotation of tapes, a collection of classic albums from the ‘60s and ‘70s. He travels around Shibuya in his little blue van and performs his required routine maintenance, treating each location with the utmost care and dignity, taking pride in the crucial service he provides the general public. His work partner, an aloof twenty-something, oversleeps and works hastily. He takes his lunch in the same park each day and stares wistfully up into the leafy canopy above, watching the light filter through the leaves and dance onto the ground below. When the moment feels right, he pulls a compact film camera out of his work jumpsuit and snaps a photo. After work he heads back home, sheds his jumpsuit, and coasts through the streets on his bicycle, heading to the public baths and for a bite at his regular spot. He knows everyone along the way, always arriving to a warm reception and kind friendliness from the locals and employees. Eventually, he heads home, rolls out his bedspread, and reads under a small booklight until he falls asleep. When the sun rises once again in the morning, it’s another day of comforting routine.
In these first few days, there are only minor changes to Hirayama’s daily schedule, frequently instigated by affable coworker Takashi, too young to see the scope of the moments passing him by as he dials in on winning the affections of the girl he’s infatuated with. Hirayama watches on with a knowing warm smile as Takashi fumbles in awkward desperation, a smile that knows the familiar fluttering chaos of young love and rushing emotions. At the right intersection of life it’s like seeing a stunningly rendered portrait of how you are splintering as a person, leaving behind the race to make your way towards some unattainable ideal and endeavoring to become more inwardly comfortable, to find peace in your routine. Here, the film finds resonant tranquility, but this is all before Wenders begins to do what he does best, to push the inertia towards a stunning display of humanism.
The film thus far could be easily compared to Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016), as a similarly quiet portrait of daily working class life painted against the beauty that can be found in the simple wonders of existence. When Hirayama’s niece Niko arrives suddenly in the middle of the film, sitting outside his front door after he arrives home from his nightly journey through the city, it’s like the poetic serenity of Paterson collides with the gentle warmth of Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958). After running away from home, she accompanies Hirayama through his daily routine, and the film begins to truly bloom. A flickering impression of Tati and his nephew biking through the dusty working class streets of France dances across the mind as Niko and Hirayama cruise through the warm breeze, Niko comforted by her uncle’s stable presence and simple kindness. Escaping the noisy frustrations of a home life occupied by social status anxieties, her experiences with her mother are reflected in Hirayama’s knowing expressions and comforts, as if without a word he could understand completely what she might be dealing with. No need for an elaborately designed house of zany comedic mechanisms to represent the failings of an overtly sterilized and lifeless modernity, Hirayama’s brief exchange with his sister after she arrives in a luxury car with a driver delivers decades of exasperation and exhaustion in a few short sentences. She remarks with careless dismissal about his work, with an air of disgust as she inquires if he’s still cleaning toilets. In response, he nods gently, accompanied by a smile.
The brilliance of Koji Yakusho’s performance is how much is conveyed through that smile. A reflexive beaming, pride embedded in his belief that what he does matters; a thoughtful chuckle at the backhanded comment, a reminder that his elective disconnect from his family is a decision that brings him peace; a little smug satisfaction not being someone who thinks so little of the working class. This is every moment with Hirayama, a truly complex performance that nurtures and lets bloom a rich and thoughtful emotional vibrance. In the hands of anyone else it seems these ideas may fall apart, lacking the reverential authenticity of every emotional beat. Instead it is his film, one where even the moments of tranquility and satisfaction are painted with tinges of sorrow and grief, impressions of a past life filled with turmoil and struggle, one that has been overcome and delicately woven into this peaceful existence.
Perfect Days is a revelation, a master director reflecting an entire career by managing to pack the emotional resonance of decades of work exploring the human condition into one character. One character who can affect the regretful sorrow of Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas (1984) along with the distant hopefulness of William Hurt in Until the End of the World (1991) and the gentle empathy of Peter Falk in Wings of Desire. One character who can emote all of that and more on the way to work listening to Nina Simone. It also reflects a thoughtful consideration of so much more cinema, a comprehensive image of the way cinema can internalize and impact and inspire, reminding you of a beautiful history of humanism on the screen like the gentle persistent hum of the city outside your window on a warm spring night.
Sun still rises every morning and sets every evening. There’s always another day, right?
William Jackson Harper as Everett in Paterson (2016)