Simple Joys: is Perfect Days the Most Zen Movie Ever?

Gentle and poetic, Wim Wenders’ new film is a life-affirming reflection on finding small moments of beauty every day.

good.film

a year ago

Why should I see Perfect Days?

Feel like a calmer time at the movies? Perfect Days is for you. Like warm milk or hot buttered toast, it’s a simple but supremely comforting pleasure.

What is the movie Perfect Days about?

Perfect Days explores social causes like Family & Community and Poverty & Inequality

Leave it to German director Wim Wenders to create a soulful and thought-provoking film about a man who cleans public toilets. If you’ve never heard of Wenders, he’s most well known for his breakout 80s films Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. He’s become known as a master of observational or “slow” cinema, with recurring themes of memory, loss, time, and nostalgia.

That’s all fully present in his gentle new drama, a German-Japanese co-production that earned an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. Interestingly, the original concept wasn’t a film at all. It began life as a documentary: a PR exercise to publicise the Tokyo Toilet Art Project, a series of architecturally unique public toilets installed across the Shibuya district of central Tokyo. The finished film is a testament to the wonderful fusion of Wenders’ sweet observational style with Japanese sensibilities.

Perfect Days gives us a week in the simple yet dignified life of 60-something Hirayama (played by Koji Yakusho, who scored the Best Actor trophy at Cannes for his warm, endearing performance). Each of Hirayama’s days are… well, the same. He wakes before dawn. Folds his bedding. Tends to his plants. And pulls on his overalls with “The Tokyo Toilet” stamped on the back.

What unfolds could easily be a film about society’s less fortunate. One that tells a bleak story about a working-class existence with little joy. But it isn’t, and it doesn’t. Instead, Perfect Days reinforces one of life’s greatest lessons: peace of mind often comes from the smallest of joys. If you choose to focus on them, they’re there to find. Every day, as he steps outside his modest flat to clean toilets, Hirayama chooses to look up at the sky, take a deep breath and smile.

What does Perfect Days have to say about connection?

Hirayama’s days might be similar, but he’s not a drone. Wenders injects little details that bring his personality to life: his love of old paperbacks, black & white photography and soulful musicians like Otis Redding, Nina Simone and Lou Reed. Each morning, he buys a small coffee and steers his tiny van through a spaghetti of overpasses as the city wakes up. Each night, he stops by an underground noodle stand, where the owner hands him a cold drink "for all your hard work". He reads on his tatami mat floor by lamplight. He sleeps. The next day, he wakes in the dark and repeats the process.

When we’re shown the same habits, we keenly notice the differences; Wenders builds Hirayama’s routine for us so the unique moments stand out. Take his relationship with nature: he often admires trees, taking photos of the foliage and smiling at the light poking through the leaves (the film’s working title was Komorebi - the Japanese word for the way sunlight filters through trees). One day, he asks a passing monk’s permission to remove a tiny sprout from a tree root. Hirayama’s care as he digs up the delicate plant and carries it home tells us more about his values than any verbal exchange could.

That’s probably for the best, because Hirayama doesn’t bother with words when a friendly nod will do - even if passers-by look at him strangely when he smiles at them. As his co-worker Takashi describes him, "Great worker, but not a great speaker. I don't even know his voice" (Hirayama barely says a word for the first half an hour of the film). Takashi asks him, "Aren't you ever lonely?" but Hirayama doesn't answer. Unmarried and childless, it’s clear that he’s emotionally fulfilled by his own system of small rewards.

“I think a lot of people will watch Perfect Days and feel a longing for a simpler way of life, for a reduction in what we have and what we consume. In many ways, Hirayama is a perfect example of how to live.”
~ Wim Wenders

An example is the folded paper he finds tucked behind a basin: a noughts & crosses game with only one box filled. He adds a cross, folds the page, and puts it back. Days later, a mystery stranger has added a new nought. Hirayama chuckles as the game plays out over a week or more, until the stranger leaves their final move along with a smiley face and a ‘thank you!’. In this delightfully lo-fi way, he forms a connection with someone he has never met, and will never meet; this simple joy is in contrast to the real life strangers he sees each day, who look at him blankly and don’t return his smiles.

Hirayama is at his most relaxed at his favourite restaurant; the hostess, Mama, and other patrons know him well. Watching Mama sing “The House of the Rising Sun” seems to bring Hirayama a lot of pleasure, and a hint of yearning. But is that longing for a connection that’s yet to be made, or a memory of one from the past? Perfect Days’ finale has an unexpectedly bittersweet encounter that gives us the answer - and an even deeper sense of Hirayama’s persona than we had before.

How does Perfect Days examine generational and class divides?

A wonderful aspect to Perfect Days is how Wenders and actor Koji Yakusho make sure we don’t see Hirayama as a robot or a relic. Sure, he’s ordered and habitual, but not fastidiously so. Yeah, he’s old school, sticking to cassette tapes and riding a bicycle to process his latest roll of film - YES, FILM! - but there’s something really endearing about Hirayama’s relaxation with his life; the comfort he derives from his habits. He’s an analogue man in a digital world.

"Maybe he's clinging to the past. But he's clinging a little bit also to his youth. He chooses in the morning exactly what he's going to listen to that day. And it's not random."
~ Director Wim Wenders, on Hirayama’s love of music on cassette tapes

Wenders is underlining generational differences when it comes to patience, values and the pace of life in the 2020s. His young colleague Takashi often turns up late, scrolling his phone while loosely scrubbing with the other hand. He sees Hirayama inspecting a toilet bowl with a hand mirror and tells him “Hey, relax, it’s getting dirty again anyway.” Eventually, he quits, and Hirayama works solo into the night to cover the dozen or so locations they’re booked to clean.

When Hirayama makes it home, he’s surprised to find his teenage niece waiting for him in the dark. She’s run away from home, and joins him on his cleaning rounds the next day. Cue some cute senior/Gen-Z misunderstandings - she’s mystified by cassette tapes; when she asks if she can get Van Morrison on Spotify, Hirayama replies, “I don’t know that shop.” They’re fond of each other, but small clues through the day imply that their family has deep rifts.

Hirayama asks his niece Niko why she ran away - did she have a fight with her mother? Niko flips the question back, wanting to know why he and her mother (Hirayama’s sister) don't get along. “You and Mum have nothing in common,” she tells him. “We live in a different world.” We’re left to reflect on what those differences may be until Hirayama’s sister arrives to collect Niko, and Wenders reassigns the story: from a generational divide, to one of status.

From her style of dress and chauffeured car, it’s clear that Hirayama’s sister is wealthy. She asks her brother “Are you really cleaning toilets?”, to which Hirayama nods and smiles. He's not ashamed of his work. His sister’s question implies so much: her disbelief at his work, the vast gap in their societal status, and a hint of what Hirayama’s former life might have been.

How does Perfect Days touch on ageing and our past?

Wenders sprinkles short, dreamlike black and white sequences throughout Perfect Days that give us an insight into Hirayama’s state of mind. Some are more literal (ink scrawling noughts and crosses onto paper) and others more abstract: slow, shifting images of faces and nature, water and shadows. Yet all of them symbolise memories - and Hirayama’s mysterious past.

Wenders threads a theme of ageing lightly through Perfect Days: there’s the senior who sweeps the leaves from Hirayama’s path each day, an older homeless man who camps near one of the toilet blocks on his rounds; Hirayama himself is nearly 70. A key puzzle piece: in their one scene, Hirayama’s sister asks if he will visit their ageing father, who now lives in a nursing home and “no longer recognizes anything.” He just shakes his head, and nothing more is said, but as his sister leaves, Hirayama is overwhelmed with emotion for the first time in the film.

That night, Hirayama dreams about an old, shirtless father figure who’s falling, slowly flailing; he looks lost, like he’s fading away. It’s a poetic contrast with the Hirayama’s own life. He might “only” be a toilet cleaner - but as he listens to Feelin’ Good by Nina Simone and smiles, his eyes filling with happy tears, his own contentment and sense of self seem assured.

What are critics saying about Perfect Days?

“Zen and the art of toilet cleaning? You'd better believe it. This is as gentle as it gets — a humble little film, maybe, but an enriching one. It's a soul-cleanse.”
- Alex Godfrey, Empire Magazine

“Perfect Days shares the poetic, contemplative rhythms of Ozu at his most lyrical; even Wenders’s squared-off frame evokes a quieter, more harmonious era.”
- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

“A poem of extraordinary subtlety and beauty.”
- Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

Seen the film? What’s your take - fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear it. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!

So what’s the takeaway from Perfect Days?

Props to Wim Wenders for artfully bringing to life a film that’s oh-so quintessentially Japanese. Like kimono silk, its gentle strands of story are woven through our days with Hirayama; there to be teased out and reflected upon, rather than yelled at max volume.

On the surface, Perfect Days is about the dignity of routine, and the joy of simple pleasures. Sitting under a shaded tree in the warm sun, savouring an icy drink, crying to a much-loved song. That would be lovely as is, and yet there’s so much more underneath. Wenders has crafted a deeply thoughtful, visual poem about rejecting life’s modern pace, embracing our relationship with nature, and letting go of the faded memories that haunt us as we age.

Is Perfect Days “slow” cinema? Undoubtedly. Is that a bad thing? It depends. If you’re chasing Marvel-level thrills, this isn’t the film for you. But if the latest blockbuster is a Starbucks energy hit, think of Perfect Days as the Japanese tea ceremony of movies: a calm, deliberate, and measured experience that rewards you for slowing down, breathing in and smiling.