A distinct visual memory that lingered past my first viewing of this slow, contemplative masterpiece—amid a barrage of other rich, visual imprints—was the recurrence of Tokyo’s Skytree, the highest tower in the world, during the protagonist Hirayama’s structured commute to and from work. The same vision would often also puncture his flaneur-like travails in a city he seems to have called home for some time, almost striking him as if out of nowhere. Its vertically piercing obelisks and spire would seem to follow him, travel with him, and that remains one of the ways that visual is burned into the viewer’s memory too. Though architecture shares a common ground or two with the film, the tower’s physical presence in a city like Tokyo may not lend itself to the same kind of controlled emergence, or conversely, obsolescence, in the same way as it would to a camera. A parallel may be drawn to Roland Barthe’s odyssey in Paris, The Eiffel Tower, and Other Mythologies (1979) wherein Barthes comments on the visual omnipresence of the Eiffel Tower on a course to traverse the city, how it could virtually be spotted from anywhere, and how it was “incorporated into daily life until you can no longer grant it any specific attribute, determined merely to persist, like a rock or the river.” That, to me, became the most profound memory and observation, architecturally speaking, in a film that is otherwise replete with both, structures that exist inconspicuously, and vie for iconicity. The underlying dichotomy between an architecture that demands to be seen with all the visual subtlety of a town carnival, and its eventual relegation to the background nonetheless, against an essential architecture with the ability to innately delight or just exist with its user, is what informs the emotional core of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. It dwells on inciting a stoic reflection on what truly matters, while at the same time using allegorical ties to urban living to poeticise minimalism and the ‘joy in small things’.

The protagonist Hirayama—a silent but scenery stealing Kôji Yakusho—lives his perfect days in contentment and doctored rhythm as a toilet cleaner in Shibuya. A fair degree of the film’s composition itself comprises sequences of Hirayama indulging in his daily schedule; tending to his plants, cleaning his apartment, driving to work, having his lunch at the same spot in a public park, or diligently cleaning the Tokyo Toilets that shot to celebrity status just a few months shy of the pandemic. Quite the phenomena, almost as if media circles around the world couldn’t concertedly collectively fathom the gravity of public amenities like toilets as architecturally designed interventions, the Tokyo Toilets boasted architectural hall of fame names including Nao Tamura, Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Toyo Ito, Marc Newson and Sou Fujimoto. They were designed to be landmarks, but in the Japanese context, the perceived discord isn’t entirely distant. Wenders cites how the perception of toilets in Japanese culture as sanctuaries of peace and dignity differing from that of only sanitation in the West became one of the reasons he wanted to weave a fictional story around them, as opposed to the non-fictional short films he was originally approached to do. “They rather looked like temples of sanitation than toilets. I liked the idea of ‘art’ linked to them," he states in an official release.

To his credit, in capturing Hirayama’s diligence and commitment towards his job, easy to dismiss as menial with a worldview, he toes the line between monotony and romanticism, often tipping over to the latter. Ironically enough, the Western idea of ‘sanitisation’ then lends to the erasure and emittance of such spaces from the public realm while their celebration as not just actual sanctuaries but also architectural icons alludes to the very different notion of care and service in Japan. The care that is the split side of that celebrity, the rather bitter afterthought of the ‘noise’ of global attention and media features, keeps the wheels turning and is what contributes to the upkeep of an architecture designed to be celebrated after, proverbially, the architect has left the building. Wenders, seemingly a man of both worlds, bridges these two diverse ideas with overwhelming simplicity—one that doesn’t easily dwell on but begets the contrast above—in both his visuals and his leading man in Yakusho.

Hirayama’s informal, and to a degree, the non-outcome-driven pursuit of literature, music and photography, allows him to lead a fuller, more complete life, much to the irk of abetting and probing individuals around him who are puzzled at his contentment of life of cleaning toilets, and often regard his meagre personal possessions—driven by sentiment more than vintage value—as junk. His modest residence, while reflective of his passions, exceeds the design sense of induced minimalism, once again pitting the Western connotation of the movement with its Japanese counterpart, where it obviously assumes more complete, holistic proportions. While Western minimalism, particularly in North America, comes tainted with the idea of an elusive purity projected through clean lines and exposed structural joints, with the etymological origin of the word in the Latin minimus (meaning small or reduced) only a subset, Japanese ideals of minimalism dwell on and build from the very idea of reduced consumption and are laced with a culture rooted in spirituality. A couple of remarkable shots show the house gorgeously bathed in hints of neon from Tokyo’s vibrant city lights filtering through the thin screens along the house’s envelopes, in a way doubling up on the idea of Hirayama’s sanctum transcending his physical refuge and unfazed by the allure of big city living. He is seen contently basking in the sunlight from these screens on his days off.

Wenders’ repertoire establishes his auteurship and distinct voice in his character’s search for an urban identity, intrinsically tied with the ‘form’ of the city. Both Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) are fine examples, with Perfect Days making a fine addition to his filmography along these lines, and in a welcome non-European context. Even as the visuals remain memorable, Wenders exerts a degree of control through the 4:3 aspect ratio throughout, almost at odds with Hirayama’s sage-like spirit. My own first experience of the film was coloured by a theatrical viewing at the Barbican’s cinema, where ideas of control and welfare design are both manifest and come undone. In that, the curiously situated protagonist in Hirayama in a stellar act by Kôji Yakusho is Wender’s crowning glory. He doesn’t antithesise the above ideas as much as he can circumvent these creative choices through the silent power of his defiance of normative structures, or for him, simply existing. It's immediately disarming and works with an arresting charm. The mundane outlives the marvel, just as “everyday stories are the only eternal stories.” Cue Perfect Day by Lou Reed.

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