I recently watched Wim Wenders’ masterpiece Perfect Days, and it left me thoroughly spellbound. The film made me revisit themes of solitude, monotony, zen, resignation and most importantly gratitude. Here’s a quick rundown of what Perfect Days is all about.
The movie deals with an elderly Japanese man Hirayama ( a nod to Ozu’s Tokyo Story) who works in sanitation. Day in and day out, Hirayama sets out to clean toilets in Tokyo. Exhibiting an impeccable work ethic, Hirayama wakes up before dawn, waters his plants, shaves, dons his jumper and gets to scrubbing. He is taciturn and acetic while still evocating an effusive smile. Actor Koji Yakusho portrays Hirayama's many (often contradictory) shades with a delightful aplomb. Hirayama plays out his days with mechanical precision, following the same pattern every day. He drives to the town’s toilets in his van, listening to his cassette collection featuring American rock icons like Van Morrison, CCR and Lou Reed. He goes to the same place to catch a drink, visits the same bookstore to buy a $1 book and frequents the same dark little bar-restaurant forming an uncanny tryst with the female proprietor. The “same-ness” of Hirayama’s days reminded me of another classic - Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The rhythm is broken, only partially, when Hirayama’s niece shows up at this house, having run away from her otherwise highly affluent life. Hirayama’s interaction with his sister as she comes back to pick up her daughter throws light on some unexplained familial unease. Hirayama breaks down shortly after, giving us the first glimpse of his internal strife, in an otherwise stoic existence. The movie ends with a poignant longshot of Yakusho riding into the sunrise overwhelmed with what seem consecutive layers of happiness and sadness as Nina Simone’s I’m Feeling Good plays on the radio. Read more about the movie and its themes in this wonderful review by New Yorker’s Richard Brody or in this Ebert Piece.
Perfect Days hit home for me because of its subtle description of contentment and respectability in solitude. When I moved from Texas to Chicago, I was isolated with no familiarity or close connections in the new city. Combined with my reserved nature and remote job, I had very few intentional human interactions for a long period. Much like Hirayama, solitude led to self-sufficiency as the years passed on. Wender’s decision to give no insight into any “spontaneous” thoughts of Hirayama and present him, almost like an automaton, mirrored a phase where I felt similarly robotic in my patterns This “a-curiosity” feeds into the repetitively minimalist life of Hirayama which though cultured and aesthetically resplendent, feels robotic. It reminded me of what a friend called my food habits. It’s been 5 years now that I’ve had the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day in varying quantities. Food, unlike the celebratory ritual that it is in Indian families, has become a raw material to be quantified and standardised. Most aspects of my routine have become similarly measured and rationed through this "Hirayama-ization" process. The tyranny of a self-imposed regiment can be as easily romanticised as lamented and this inherent ambiguity is what makes the last scene, all the more relatable.
Perfect Days is at one level the celebration of the mundane. Poetry celebrating the quotidian. At another level, it can just as easily be a commentary on flailing social ties which plague the 1st world (Vivek Murthy’s report on the American Loneliness Epidemic). The aphorism “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, it means you’re in bad company” may or may not hold in one’s life. Whether Hirayama revels in his solitude or secretly pines for companionship is debatable. There is a Hirayama in each of us assessing our imperfections in our perfect days.