2023-12-04 11:35:20
IMMERSION IN HABITS
Wim Wenders signs a new fake road movie, his pioneering genre which he sublimated in his Road Trilogy from the 1970s composed ofAlice in the Cities, Wrong move et Over time. Imbued with great delicacy and abundant visual and thematic richness, Perfect Days takes us into the daily life of a sixty-year-old Tokyoite, witness to the increasing aging and demographic upheavals of the Japanese population.
Hirayama, maintenance worker for the famous high-tech public toilets in Tokyo, is a modest and silent hero who, aside from his work, enjoys reading, tastes his favorite dishes and listens to the classics of Lou Reed or Patti Smith. Kôji Yakusho thoughtfully lends his features and aura to this charactertransforming the routine into a formidable character study where Hirayama becomes by turns landscape, guide, idea, simple worker or sometimes all of these at once. These fragments of daily life take on a Homeric dimension in a drama which is just as Homeric.
Mr.Clean
Wim Wenders frames and transforms the Japanese capital through the eyes of his protagonist, a man in search of sobriety in the face of urban frenzy and the absurdity of contemporary life. The 4/3 format and the short focal length not only immerse us in the daily life of our hero, but also make us fully adopt his point of view. Thus, Tokyo, one of the most populated cities in the world, has rarely appeared so close to human scale.
This proximity is striking in the scenes aboard the hero’s truck, where the capital awakens under a magnificent light captured by cinematographer Franz Lustig. And this snapshot of the cleaner’s life, tirelessly repeated in the film, reveals much more than an ode to resilience.
CHRONICLE OF A CHANGE
In fact, Hirayama’s quest for simplicity is not the rest of the samurai that we assume and Wim Wenders does not dwell on the preconceptions of the usual Japanese fantasy. In Perfect Days, humility gradually gives way to destructive and fundamentally difficult austerity. Everything changes when the character’s niece, played by Arisa Nakano, confronts him to the limits of his daily life regulated like a clock and to his deep solitude.
It is through this encounter that Wim Wenders makes a narrative shift and disrupts its division. From there, the repetition of everyday life becomes stifling and life no longer appears serene for Hirayama. Always the guarantor of poetic grandeur, this character does not find himself confronted with a possible emptiness of his habits or his modesty. The issue is very different for him. His whole secret garden is collapsing, being confronted with the harshness of the outside world and the shell it has erected.
Suddenly, Perfect Days assumes a reflection of fascinating complexity, the past emerging with subtlety and tenderness. Hirayama then abandons himself to uncontrollable wandering, becoming an actor in the ravages of time and industrialization from which he had until then protected himself. When his sister visits, the weight of their past becomes heartbreaking, even if Perfect Days made the salutary choice of never revealing anything regarding it.
Confined in a delicate position, the character becomes aware of the power of transmission and the bond with his niece. This bond briefly sends him into hell when he leaves. Everything opens and closes in a brilliant and poignant final sequence, where the singular voice of Nina Simone resonates and calls for a new day. Feeling Good?
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#review #everyday #hero
