There is a gorgeous simplicity to the film Perfect Days, a film focused on the beauty of the mundane. This will not be foreign to the fans of director Wenders who has explored themes like this in the past, but with Perfect Days he is saying something truly lovely and profound while giving us something completely ordinary. And that is the point.
Perfect Days plays out as we watch our hero work and leisure his way through day by day. We watch him wake, do his morning routine, work as a public toilet cleaner (which since it is set in Tokyo is a lot less disgusting than a westerner may expect), take his dinner, listen to western music, go back to bed. The first 30 minutes of the film are just following him almost wordlessly go through his day. Then the pattern repeats with little variation. The film begins to inject some excitement as little things happen such interactions with a coworker, visits from family, and little personal stops. We even get to see how regular and undramatic his day off is. There are little hints at who this man is, little things said, small reactions here and there, which help us see the humanity of this man whose life so many would describe as simplistic.
But at the end of the film Wenders and Takusho, with his wonderfully powerful yet understated performance, present us with a moment of real complicated glory. The final shot of him driving to work with a range of emotion panning across his face is one of the most powerful shots I've seen in a long time. There is a thesis here, that perhaps this man has found peace and satisfaction by living a life cut off from the struggles and passions so many pursue, that perhaps he had experienced real pain and now is free of that. It is controversial in a world where we are conditioned to want to much.
Perfect Days is a quiet little scream against so much of what we are supposed to feel and it is purely lovely.
Perfect Days
Starring: Kōji Yakusho
Director: Wim Wenders
Writers:Takuma Takasaki, Wim Wenders
No comments:
Post a Comment