Perfect Days

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audio en français

Perfect days

Perfect Days

"Perfect Days" gives us a glimpse into the life of Hirayama, a man who spends his day in strict routine. A routine that spans from his job as a toilet cleaner to his afternoon visits at the public bath and even to the evenings on his day off at the local Izakaya. Breaking this routine are only short moments of joy where we can see Hirayama taking a moment to appreciate the little details around him, such as a sapling growing underneath a tree or the faint reflections of a passerby on the brushed metal ceiling of the bathroom he just cleaned. It's not until a few days into the routine that we learn more about the background of this character that we've been so closely observing. "Perfect Days" gives you a lot of freedom to see Hirayama as the unassuming worker who chose a life in solitude or a more tragic figure as an estranged brother who doesn't keep contact with his family. I saw Hirayama as a grieving father who visits the Jizo shrine on his day off to pray for his lost child and grieves by living life in the past through books and 80's rock. It's the grief that has him shelter the saplings to watch them grow. This Hirayama keeps up a façade of being content with watching the light as it falls through the leaves or blowing bubbles in the bath. A façade that breaks down in the final scene, where he tries hard to enjoy the music he's usually so in love with but can't help but burst out in tears. "Perfect Days" is a masterpiece of a character study that doesn't try too hard to tell a story but lets you observe Hirayama for a few days of his life and hopes that you can find a little bit of yourself in him. 10/10.

... well, not quite, although the quite spectacular public toilets of the Japanese capital certainly feature very heavily in this film, because the main character is a toilet cleaner. Hirayama's life is one of routine. In the morning he wakes in his tiny apartment, folds away his bed linen, cleans his teeth, drinks vending-machine coffee, drives to work while listening to '70s Western soft rock, cleans some toilets (rarely wearing gloves, I noticed!), has lunch in a park, takes photographs of leaves, cleans some more toilets, has dinner in a café, goes home, reads a book, falls asleep and dreams of leaves. Weekends vary slightly, as they include trips to the bath house, to the laundrette and to the second-hand bookshop to buy that week's book. Occasionally things happen to add variety to the routine: there is the love life of his comedy assistant; the sudden appearance of his teenaged niece, running away from her mother; playing 'it' with the ex-husband of his favourite restaurant's owner. You have to be in the right frame of mind to watch this film: its lack of any dramatic happenings and its slow (peaceful?) pace means it will not satisfy everyone. As Hirayama, Kôji Yakusho does a good job of creating a character who is endearing despite the fact he very rarely speaks: the viewer grows to like him because his face portrays the obvious enjoyment he takes in the world around him. I would be very surprised if this does not make it onto the shortlist for the best foreign language film Oscar. It may even be the winner.

The theme of this epic time-waster is to embrace the beautiful moments throughout the day, but in my opinion, that could have been said with a poem, not something that wastes two hours of people's lives. Not only is this movie boring, it's intentionally boring. We know daily life is monotonous, but this film wants you to be doubly sure that life is monotonous. There is no tension, no conflict, no structure, no antagonist, and most importantly, no one in the audience asking themselves, "What's going to happen?" Instead, there are self-satisfied moralists behind the scenes, who seriously believe torturing the audience with endless repetition and pointless scenes is good art.

Perfect Days is a good, relaxing experience. It teaches you a lot about life, but more than that it showed me that public toilets in Tokyo, Japan are the shiz. I mean, I'm comparing them with those back home in Mumbai, India, and it's just amazing to see such shiny, well-maintained, and usable public bathrooms. Once you stop admiring the toilets, you'll start admiring the obsessive interest in which our lead guy cleans them, day in and day out. And through that he shows how his perfect life is. Throughout the movie I would wait for him to start playing his cassette and anticipate what rock track he would play between his tasks and he didn't disappoint once. "Respect sports teams and others' religions" is another line that will stay with me. Perfect Days will stay with me because it's different, it's therapeutic, it's wholesome. Watch it. (Watched at the 2023 MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.)

Saw this at the 2023 filmfestival in Ghant (Belgium). Lots of interesting details, giving me a nice experience to watch it all. However, along the first hour a sort of desperation came over me, despite the variations from day to day, fearing that this would go on and on for another hour to fill up the announced 2h03 running time. Luckily, the daily routine broke in the second hour due to a few encounters that took care of the long overdue deviation from the daily grind. I know what the title says, and the main protagonist displays a very satisfied attitude against his work, but it would have stretched our patience when his daily routine would go on as in the first hour, without giving us something to chew on. Eventually, something different happened, even more than once, due to a few unplanned encounters. Nevertheless, overall I see no added value in this movie, other than showing us some Tokyo city parts and local infrastructure (I've never been there, so unchartered territory for me). The achievement of the lead actor may be remarkable, awarded in Cannes after the premiere, but does all this warrant the production costs and the time we spent while viewing this?? To conclude: I know that few workers nowadays take pride in their work, as we see in Harayama who maintains his good humor whatever happens. (One exception: when his co-worker suddenly left him, he was less happy and pressured his employer to send a replacement.) The movie at hand demonstrates that a job can be inherently rewarding, even when routine and boredom springs to mind when seeing it. Neither is it a prestigious job, rather the opposite, not something to impress your future parents-in-law. What remains of this movie are the splendid visuals of Tokyo and its infrastructure.