Perfect Days (2023)

It's PG, but I had to explain that old men bathing naked was just a thing that happened in certain places.  So, mild nudity is the biggest takeaway from this movie.  Yeah, yeah, I should pre-screen movies that my kids are going to watch.  The issue isn't necessarily that there is questionable content in this.  The issue is "Do my kids want to watch a movie about a guy who cleans toilets everyday?"  The answer is "No.  Only Dad wants to watch that."

DIRECTOR: Wim Wenders

Confession time:  I've never seen a Wim Wenders movie.  I thought I had.  Then I went down the IMDB credits of Wim Wenders and realized that I never actually sat down and watched Paris, Texas.  I'll get around to it.  I've seen a lot.  I haven't seen everything. We need to be gracious to the blog writer sometimes.

I don't know how this worked out to be the follow-up to The Zone of Interest.  Both, if you completely ignored context, are movies that almost remove themselves from traditional narrative structures. Now, that is a wild simplification.  I'm even slightly aghast at myself for comparing these two movies.  The Zone of Interest may lack a structural narrative, but that's because it is a commentary on the normality of ignoring horrors.  Perfect Days lacks a narrative because it is a celebration of the small, analog parts of life. Somehow, this becomes the worst and best double feature ever.  Now, I went off on Zone of Interest.  I appreciated it intellectually. I even would go as far as to applaud it as a powerful avante-garde work.  But honestly, I didn't really like it all that much.  While I probably won't be recommending Perfect Days to people, I actually kind of enjoyed it.  Now, Zone of Interest's biggest flaw (which I acknowledged was on me) was that it didn't keep up the level of intensity for me and I left the film a little bored.  I got a little bored with Perfect Days, leading to me almost nodding off in the final ten minutes of the film.

I kept slapping myself awake.  I saw it all, but there was a struggle.  Part of the problem is that, like its title suggests, the whole thing is about maintaining almost a sense of serenity or zen. Hirayama has problems, but nothing that normally would necessitate a movie to run a discourse over the topics covered.  The thing that really separates these two movies is that The Zone of Interest is almost not about characters.  Perfect Days is all about character, especially if you are invested in the character himself.  Hirayama is a bit of an enigma.  An aging man in the middle of a city, Hirayama embraces his solitude.  Hirayama --potentially an avatar for Wim Wenders...if I knew more about him --embraces the analog joys in life.  His books are used.  He listens to cassettes.  He takes care of saplings. He rides a bike to watch baseball games at restaurants.  He lives almost a monastic lifestyle.  Yet, he seems so happy. I  can't help but think that Hirayama is the intentional deconstruction of the archetype.

I need to watch this movie again, but I'm pulled to movies like Umberto D. and Bubba Ho-Tep.  (Okay, those two movies don't normally get lumped together.) These are both movies about the dangers and fears of aging.  Especially with Umberto D., the protagonist views the city as something isolating.  The ways of his youth have disappeared and there's something completely terrifying of dying alone surrounded by people.  Hirayama almost willfully ignores these fears.  Maybe not absolutely.  The movie ends with a bittersweet takeaway, potentially meant to act as a mirror for the viewer.  I'm talking about the final shot of Hirayama smiling broadly at his music in his van, but also transitioning into a state of almost tears.  But that's not the majority of the movie.  Instead, Hirayama takes what traditionally is considered a disgusting job --cleaning toilets --and turns it into something to take pride in.  It's not like the movie is unaware of the stigma of such a job.  Takashi (who can best be described as "a lot") points out the futility of such a job.  But he finds value in it.

There's almost a parable nature to the movie.  I can't help but view the movie as meditation.  It is so quiet and so peaceful.  Hirayama goes to work, gets the same can of coffee everyday, and enjoys the same pleasures every day.  There are small blips that remind us that every day, as similar as it was to the previous day, has a sense of variety to it. But Hirayama makes his very simple life look pleasing.  Because he has divorced himself from traditional capitalist values.  His apartment is spartan.  He has organized his cassettes into a really sexy looking shelf, displaying his collection.  While he reads a lot of challenging books (I find Faulkner to be mostly inaccessible), he only has a solitary bookshelf.  His plants aren't purchases.  He finds them during lunch hours.  He seems to eat the same egg-salad (we assumed) sandwiches across from the same awkward girl every day.  But he seems so happy.  A kid finds his mom.  He smiles.  He finds out that his deadbeat partner is a Down syndrome boy's favorite person.  He smiles.  He watches baseball and he enjoys the fact that people have strong opinions over a game.  He smiles.

The perfect days aren't perfect days by most people's perspectives.  They are days full of burdens and toils.  But to remind us that no one has a perfect life, Hirayama has conflicts.  Takashi (again, a lot) is just this force of chaos.  He shows up for work when he wants.  He wants rides.  He wants to sell Hirayama's tapes.  He needs money.  Hirayama clearly looks down on him.  (I have to infer because Hirayama almost takes a vow of silence in this movie, further pushing the narrative that he lives a monastic lifestyle).  But he's not a character who naturally wallows.  I wallow.  I think the world is a terrible place all of the time.  But it's also because I'm one of those people who continually complicates his own life.  It sounds like I'm dramatic.  I'd like to think that I'm not.  But I also know that there are so many things that seem like I need to do them when, in reality, I could just simplify my life. 

Hirayama chooses the things in his life that are valuable and almost intentionally purges everything else.  He likes people. It's not like he's a hermit.  It's just that he invests everything into the things he values.  As depressing as it is for me, one of the things that guarantees him a sense of peace is that isolation.  For a while, I wondered if he was asexual.  That would explain a lot.  But there is this implication that he's in love with Mama from the restaurant.  Those near-tears at the end, I think those tears are about her.  From Hirayama's perspective, happiness comes from controlling the self.  It's choosing the things that are important.  But there is an element of sacrifice to that lifestyle.  He values his books and his tapes so much that it almost seems like a relationship is incongruous to the lifestyle he has fostered.  It's sad, but it's not that he's necessarily just lonely.  When he meets Mama's ex, there's the fear that things will change.  The level of relationship that he has with Mama seems to be their exchanges at the restaurant.  She makes him feel special. He's the most polite, so she likes him.  The notion that someone else is more important than he isn't a slight against him.  It's more about change.

I kind of hate that I liked this movie so much.  It's sp lovely.  There's something so seductive about simplifying a lifestyle to just gain a sense of accomplishment or joy behind it.  It is a boring movie.  I can't deny that.  Not a lot happens in the film.  But it is also a pretty and serent film.