Wim Wenders films a praise of beauty via Tokyo toilets

The German filmmaker returned to Cannes last May with “Perfect Days”, a film of great poetry, which reconnects with his attraction for Japan.

We know Wim Wenders passionate about Japan since his 1983 documentary Tokyo-Ga about director Yasujiro Ozu. He filmed the streets of Tokyo there to penetrate the mind of the filmmaker. He reconnects with Japanese urbanity in Perfect Dayswhere he follows an employee cleaning public toilets, an esthete at heart.

Spontaneous empathy

Employed in the daily cleaning of public toilets in Tokyo, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) is an aesthete who feeds on music, books and trees, faithful to a very regular, immutable, even ritualized life. The past resurfaces when his young niece, almost unknown, asks him to take her in.

Wim Wenders uses repetition to better understand his character, whose life is set like clockwork. Every day, the same gestures, the same routes, similar places and tasks. Wim Wenders’ choice of Tokyo toilets as the key location for his film is not insignificant. They receive special attention from the municipality, which calls on the greatest architects and innovators for their design. It is true that we can tune out the two hours of the film, but that is part of the project. All credit goes to actor Koji Yakusho (The Third Murder) so that we adhere to it, as it inspires spontaneous empathy.

Praise of beauty

Through him, it is a praise of the beauty and simple pleasures that Wenders films, in Hirayama’s attachment to listening to Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Van Morrisson on vintage cassettes, in his ritual of taking a photo film per day, where to read on paper and not a screen. When he first hears the name Spotify, he thinks it’s a store. Hirayama is not up to date, but knows what is beautiful. His relationship with the physical support contributes to his pleasure, to his life. Wenders does not claim that it was better before, but that the link to beauty does not emanate from the abundance available on the platforms, because it can only be exceptional.

Hirayama’s poetry is not far from that of Peterson, title and surname of the bus driver named after the city of poets where Allen Ginsberg lived, in Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 film. The arrival of Hirayama’s niece seems a bit artificial in the film, as for relaunch it, while it is sufficient in itself, in this touching and zen portrait, moving valorization of “little people”.

The sheet

Gender : Drama
Director: Wim Wenders
Actors: Koji Yakusho, Min Tanaka, Arisa Nakano
Country : Germany / Japan
Duration : 2h03
Exit : November 29, 2023
Distributer : Top and Short