Review: Perfect Days

Wim Wenders' quietly radical movie about a toilet cleaner.

“You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

-Bill Waterson

A lot of the best cinema of 2023 was about suffering and humanity's capacity to inflict harm: The creation of atomic warfare, systemic and intimate murder, genocide, grappling with loss in our past, or of loved ones, abusive relationships, the predatory capacity of the media, or the alienation of modern life. Even the one about the toy doll was really about accepting life in the face of death.

Each of these movies address this suffering in different ways, some see it as almost inevitable and futile, some challenge us to examine ourselves or accept ourselves. Some are trying to act as a startling wake-up call in hopes of jarring us into some kind of action. Others just acknowledge the awkward, messy complexity of grief.

This examination of specific suffering is not bad, but what is it that lies beneath so much of this suffering? These days I'm suspicious that the common theme underneath much of it is our collective inability to be with the moment and the world as it really is. Our inability to be satisfied. We are stuck constantly striving towards greatness. Insatiably hungry for more. We desire to construct indestructible identities, to "protect" ourselves, or our country at any cost. We attempt to create perfection instead of finding it and treasuring it where it already exists.

Perfect Days, the latest film from Wim Wenders, sits in quiet contrast to almost the entirety of last year’s notable cinema. It follows Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, as he goes through his daily routine: We watch as he gets ready for his day, listens to music as he drives to work, methodically cleans the (beautiful) toilets around Tokyo, notices beautiful light reflecting on surfaces, or wind blowing in the trees. He is helpful when called upon to be, bathes, eats, does his laundry, waters his trees, reads before bed, and dreams. Other things happen but the repetition of this life is the core of the movie.

Maybe this sounds incredibly dull, but I’d encourage people to give it a chance. I sometimes wonder what the accumulative effect is of consuming so much media where the focus is constantly on “great” or “exemplary” people of one form or another (even the evil kind). Ambitious people sometimes accomplish great and beautiful things in this world and it’s great to celebrate that, but many of the worst things are done by the most ambitious. Ambition itself is morally neutral. Having it or cultivating it will not make your life a force for good. So what does it say that the subject of so much of our media is the ambitious in one way or another? Whether we condemn or celebrate the figure on the screen, the message of the medium is the same: “this is what you do to get to be up here.”

Some part of us wants to be in the stories- we want to be the main character. Media is the liturgy of the secular religion of culture. Some part of us strives for the views, the likes, the awards, to be immortalized via depiction. Another part of us tells ourselves we want recognition for having done good in the world. Of course we want to be the good guy on the screen. We tell ourselves it’s that impulse that motivates us more than the impulse simply to be seen by the most eyes. But if we look out across society, which one really seems to be winning? And do we believe ourselves to be one of the few exceptions?

We tell ourselves that in striving for great power and notoriety that the ability to hold it responsibly is the central conflict. But what if we should be more skeptical of our striving for notoriety or power in the first place? And what would a life apart from that seeking even look like? How would we begin to find meaning in a life where we’re not engaged in any of the stories or activities the media enshrines as worth telling (which are therefore implicitly signified as meaningful)?

Hirayama finds beauty and perfection in his imperfect life. There is still pain, annoyance, awkwardness and sorrow- but he navigates all of these with a kind of simple grace. Instead of finding the imperfections as a reason to strive for something different, they are opportunities for simplicity, humility, solitude, contentment, and slowing down to appreciate the elegant beauty that life hides in all it's little corners and crevices.

In one moment Hirayama’s niece Niko sees a woman rudely ignoring him, treating him as an obstacle rather than another human. Niko looks to his face in sadness. He realizes what she’s thinking, and smiles. It’s as if he says “the lack of recognition from others is embarrassing for them, not me, little one.” She returns the smile.

This is what we need. This is radical in the face of the headlong spiral towards self-annihilation we're caught up in. The one that most of last year's cinema so beautifully and hauntingly illustrated.

Art in mediums like cinema can enrich our lives and give us a deeper understanding of the world. But the overwhelming prominence of these narratives and what most of them focus on can make us feel alienated from our own lives. The simple day to day that makes up living a life is not treated as “cinematic” or viral. But this does not mean there is anything wrong with those moments- in fact the things that aren’t usually shown on our screens are where we might stand to find the most meaning and significance. Your life except perhaps in brief fleeting moments will never look or feel like a movie. So stop waiting for, or trying to create an "inciting incident" in your life and just live. All of it counts. “Next is next, now is now.”