MIFF 2023 Film Review - Perfect Days
Images courtesy of Common State.
Leaving the Astor on the last night of MIFF, I eavesdropped on some of the immediate post-showing conversations about Wim Wenders’ new film, Perfect Days. People generally used the correct terms that they would have heard consuming other japanese media, such as “slice-of-life” and “intransitiveness”. Such is the narrative of this movie: we are treated to a relaxingly-paced story about the life of a single and mild-mannered (perhaps reclusive) janitor named Hirayama, as he goes about his public toilet rounds in Shibuya. The narrative is driven mostly by chance encounters with people and family who encourage reflections on mortality, loss and companionship. The film covers all its essential artistic aspects beautifully. Wim Wenders’ admiration for Yazujiro Ozu is consistently evident: throwbacks to Ozu’s textural title cards and his vertical shot composition are two of the most immediate examples that come to mind.
You might call this film a “Japanese Arthouse Blockbuster”, if you wanted to illustrate the “Cool Japan” institutional backing of this film: it works with a consortium of not-for-profit and corporate interests to define and beautify Japanese life. The organisation Hirayama works for, The Tokyo Toilet, is a real group that is dedicated to the preservation of some high-profile architectural bathrooms in Shibuya. Hirayama’s uniform has been designed by NIGO (of “A Bathing Ape” fame) and there is ample brand placement from popular food and clothing brands Lawson and Uniqlo. A 2022 press release almost reads as if The Tokyo Toilet is the original inspiration for this film.
Family represents the conflicting factor to Hirayama’s modest and emotionally withdrawn life. In reality though, I argue, institutional harms tend to be more of a threat: the forced uprooting of people (such as in the Tsukiji Fish Market for the Olympics), or the mass casualisation of work are more consistent factors of disruption to the ideal Japanese life. This sums up what I don’t like about Perfect Days: such a narrative implies fetishisation for the film festival audience. I cannot ignore the feeling that this film is “awards porn”, aesthetically beautiful, but thematically a bit of a navel-gaze.
In this clip from Wenders 1985 documentary Tokyo-Ga, he describes the genius of Ozu’s films is his ability to show life as it truly is. To him, Ozu shows “Long-range truth, lasting from the first image to the last. Films [...] in which the people, the objects, the cities and the countrysides [sic] revealed themselves.” Can truth reveal itself in Perfect Days? Or is it a beautiful simulacrum, contemporary Japan through the gaze of the international film market?
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Perfect Days screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.
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