Perfect Days (wim Wenders)

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)

I have a preference for cinema toilets when outside. They tend to be kept well, rarely that busy except on the blockbuster moments, and frequently have prominent enough cubicles to change my shirt after work. The Clapham Picturehouse ups the ante with handlebar hand dryers that are part of the tap. You will only know once you see someone use them, then you feel like an expert. That is how I felt watching Perfect Days.

I have yet to gain fundamental knowledge of Tokyo’s culture and society. There is something very unifying about seeing the most basic need that links us all to being the corner in which we see the world. Our Don Quixote meets Toilet wan Kenobi un Hirayama, a robust and serene lead in viewing the world. He can convey compassion and frustration in equal measure throughout the film, almost intractable in his behaviour, while showing how routine can build resilience and how brittle that can be depending on the company one keeps.

It’s an almost Pixar-like bromance he has with the younger cleaner Takashi, who is, at the moment, a hedonistic and materialistic young man of the new Tokyo age. However, it’s hard to envy his girlfriend, Joie de Vivre, when we see what Hirayam has cultivated halfway through. Not least of these is a massive collection of art found in the form of books and music that would be the envy of Shoreditch and even more so with the retro stores of Tokyo.

As he journeys non-committal between places, we see Hirama as an observer but a participant with passion, yet he ends. Knocks and sharp reveals of his family, past and passions help make the cityscape one we can’t help but be in tune with while he moves through it all in the specially adapted toilet trawler.

There are some longeurs in the film. The repetition of his daily routine at first works as bedding but veers into lagging the film. There is a tendency to cut to black and white semi-dark night sequences that seem out of the Seattle 90s scene. I would love to say the music itself is eclectic glam rock Americana to share, but frankly. I’m 47, and this hits me in the Trainspotting soundtrack, based on tracks from songs ten years before that.

It’s sharp, informative, passionate and worth a visit to have some relief, but the door on it is a bit dodgy, and it risks being a bit too heavy for the balance one would hope for. 

It’s a matinee movie by all standards—and Wim Wenders at his most stable.