Wim Wenders gifts us a gentle, contemplative piece which is rich, lovely, and worth your time.

How does Wim Wenders do this? We all (don’t we?) wish to be as content, need so little, and derive so much from life, as Hirayama (a gorgeous interior performance by Koji Yakusho). For him, it’s enjoying his job as a public toilet cleaner, listening to his cassette tapes, and his daily routine in between; it’s no more and no less than his life. Good for him – and lucky for us that we get to peer into it, and get a sense of his happiness.

Two thirds of the way through this pleasantly meandering film, by which time i too, like the bartender, would be perfectly happy for nothing to change, something does change – or more accurately, someone is introduced – and things gently level up to sweet and lovely. In a more conventional narrative film, it’s the point at which the character has hit rock bottom, after grappling with a challenge introduced earlier on.

In Perfect Days, there is no antagonist, save perhaps the threat that time or circumstance will change things.

Hirayama and his life seem to have endured with little to no disruption or evolution imposed from the changing world around them (analogue audiophile Hirayama has managed to not learn what Spotify is). Hirayama is never at odds with his situation, but rather perfectly at home within it; there’s no inciting incident, but instead in us (or at least, within me) the growing fear that something will change, or force Hirayama to, because we too fall in love with his life – or at least, with how happy he is with it.

It’s unfairly reductive of such a lovely film to compare it to another film, even favourably. Yet throughout Perfect Days, I couldn’t help but think: this is the film Paterson (2016) wishes it could be.

If you haven’t yet seen the film, don’t watch the trailer – in attempt to make a slow, contemplative film appear compelling, it compresses its events into what appears to be melodrama, which the film absolutely does not do. Perfect Days is rich and lovely and worth your time.

Further Viewing

You just want to spend more time with Wim Wenders and Koji Yakusho, don’t you? (via Collider)