A successful career as a film-maker can lead to many incidental benefits – awards, critical acclaim, cushy gigs on the judging panels of film festivals, the ability to get novels published much more easily, and so on. And if you are the renowned German auteur Wim Wenders (famous for Paris Texas, Wings of Desire, and the fact his first name is largely unchanged if you rotate it through 180 degrees), you get invited to Tokyo to observe an installation of public toilets. (This, kids, is why you want to go to film school. Oh, who am I kidding, I'd go to an exhibition of old socks if it meant another trip to Japan.) Said installation is the Tokyo Toilet Project, in which international artists have been invited to reimagine and redesign a range of loos in Shibuya, each in their own unique manner.

Inspiration, of course, is a funny old thing, and while the curators of the Tokyo Toilet Project were hoping that Wenders might be prevailed upon to do a short film or two documenting the beauty of the conveniences he discovered at the heart of this global city, the director apparently found himself moved to take a different path. This was not the occasion for a short film or a documentary. No, the toilets of Shibuya were fully deserving of a full-length feature film, which has duly arrived in the form of Perfect Days (which holds the distinction of being the first Japanese film nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar to be directed by a German. Those Germans, they get everywhere).

Perfect Days opens early one morning with its protagonist, Hirayama, waking up and getting ready to go about his day. He resembles a sort of quietly distinguished Japanese version of Clark Gable, albeit a Japanese Clark Gable who earns a crust cleaning public toilets. Hirayama is played by Koji Yakusho, whom I once came across many years ago in the astoundingly violent neo-jidaigeki movie 13 Assassins. (There are not 13 assassins in Perfect Days, though there are approximately twelve toilets.)

Hirayama heads off to work, listening to highlights from his tape collection on the way (first up is the original version of House of the Rising Sun by the Animals). He cleans a toilet, which doesn't look that messy to begin with, doubtless because the Japanese people have a sense of civic pride and still generally know how to teach their children to behave. Then he cleans a different toilet, and it must be said these are very attractive public bathrooms. The day progresses along the same sort of lines, until at its close he heads off to the public baths and then to a bar for a well-earned drink.

Then, the next day. . . well, it's more of the same, really. If you have an issue with public toilets, or indeed the people who look after them, this is not the film for you. Hirayama does his rounds and leaves spotless facilities in his wake. He takes his job seriously and does it with care and commitment – this is not a case of someone just going through the motions. The various disruptions he occasionally encounters – lost children, the romantic tribulations of his useless assistant Takashi (Tokio Emoto), an unexpected visit from his niece (Arisa Nakano) – are not enough to rattle this dude.

As you have probably surmised, Perfect Days is one of those movies which manages to get by very well without anything resembling a conventional plot. There are various amiable diversions but nothing that really ends up going anywhere. One of the dramatic cruxes of the story comes with a visit to a second-hand music shop, though revealing if anyone actually buys anything would certainly constitute a spoiler. It is nearly two hours of the minutiae of the life of a man who is taciturn to an almost supernatural degree: it qualifies as a drama simply because that's the thing it is least unlike.

Needless to say, I found it to be an immensely pleasurable and actually rather affecting experience. There is of course a place for films about wildly outlandish and fantastical events interfering with the lives of their characters, but surely we can also find a spot for those which concern themselves with the magic of the everyday, as this one does. For this is a film about a man who seems to exist in almost perfect harmony with the world around him, most of the time – Hirayama is quietly flushed with contentment at many points throughout the movie. At one point, there is perhaps inevitably a vignette which hints at the truth about his past, bringing with it a brief intrusion of human trauma, but the rest of the time he seems thoroughly well-adjusted. You would be hard-pushed to seriously argue this film is not a portrait of a life which is in the progress of being well-lived.

The film suggests that toilet attendant is not much more a prestigious job in Japan than it is anywhere else, but, just as the film proves that public loos can be beautiful, it also shows that looking after them can be as fulfilling and rewarding an experience as any other. Hirayama seems careful not to take any moment of his day for granted, listening to his tapes, keeping an eye open for any sign of ephemeral beauty, taking photographs, adding to his bonsai collection. Perhaps he does pay a price for this – family and colleagues clearly don't understand what his life is about – and Yakusho does work a small miracle in managing to suggest the hidden depths of Hirayama, the interplay of powerful feelings within him. But in the end he is one of the most endearing and likeable film characters I can remember seeing in a long time.

As befits the nature of the story, Wenders rarely does anything too fancy with the camera, with the exception of the brief monochrome sequences representing Hirayama's dreams. But his use of light and colour is captivating while retaining a sense of everyday beauty, and the songs on the soundtrack are extremely well-picked. It would be easy to banish Perfect Days off to some art house ghetto, or to dismiss it as a weird novelty film, but in truth it feels like a very accessible and enjoyable piece about what it really means to be happy. We have seen quite a few films about the banality of evil, but this is one celebrating the banality of goodness. I liked it very much.

Also Showing. . .

. . . and enjoying what looks like considerable success considering it's a potentially niche, arty film, is Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers, which likewise has its roots in east Asia – though set in London, it's loosely based on a 1987 horror novel published in Japan. Andrew Scott plays Adam, a writer living in an almost totally empty apartment block in present-day London, isolated from the world around him and rebuffing the overtures of friendship made by his neighbour (Paul Mescal). He finds himself returning to his past over and over again – in a strangely literal sense, for on a visit to the neighbourhood he grew up in, he finds his childhood home unchanged, with his parents (now seemingly younger than him) still in residence. . .

This is a strikingly beautiful film by any metric, exploring themes of loneliness, grief, and love both parental and romantic, powered by a quartet of extremely effective performances (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell play the ghostly parents). The question of what exactly is happening – are the ghosts 'real' or is it all happening in Adam's mind? – is a largely academic one, as virtually the whole film has an impressionistic, dream-like quality, with terrific cinematography and use of music. It's a profoundly moving experience and a very, very good film.

Awix

04.03.24 Front Page

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