"Perfect Days" By Wim Wenders

The famous German director and screenwriter Wim Wenders explicates the film Perfect Days from a humanistic approach, and shows how a lonely middle-aged man lives his life just after the pandemic period in Japan. Hirayama, the protagonist of the film, balances his life with music, literature, and photography while he works as a toilet attendant in Tokyo.

The catchiest feature of Hirayama is he doesn’t speak until he can’t explain himself with his body language. If he could respond with his gestures, he wouldn’t utter a word. He goes to the same places that he used to go every day, so he doesn’t have to speak in his reliable ecosystem.

Throughout the film, the audience can observe that the toilets are very clean; even Hirayama cleans up, and Hirayama is very clean and tidy too. Despite this, he is humiliated and disparaged by the public. For example, the woman with her son gets lost, and Hirayama finds him; however, the woman does not even thank him for looking after her son. The other heartbreaking point is that his parents and family are also ashamed of him, and I think they discriminated against him because of his choices. In the film, the past events are not very clear and obvious, but the audience can feel the distance between a brother and a sister and which reason makes them separated.

The title can be interpreted as both ironical and conflicting because every day is nearly the same for Hirayama, and he lives as a plain, static middle-aged man. Meanwhile, the lack of a determiner issue with the title is another interesting thing to consider.

The song choice of the film is another major motif. They influence and elaborate the scenes, especially the car scenes. For instance, it really impresses me while Hirayama sings the song “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals.

During the film, his emotions are stable, and he rarely shows negative feelings such as sadness; however, in the end he cries because he kind of reveals his hidden emotions through crying. But those tears are not an actual representation of sorrow and unhappiness.