Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I guess you could say Perfect Days is a mood. In which case, your mileage may vary widely, depending on your frame of mind when you approach this film—if you approach it at all. This is another one of those movie where critics predictably adore it, and I know many people who would never have the patience for it.

Director and co-writer Wim Wenders focuses on Hirayama (a wonderful Kôji Yakusho, who is in nearly every frame of the film), an older man who spends his work days cleaning Tokyo toilets. The company he works for is apparently very literal when it comes to their business name: Hirayama’s jumpsuit is emblazoned with the words, in English, The Tokyo Toilet.

And to be clear: we spend a lot of time following Hirayama around, cleaning public toilets around the city. A more conventional film would spend a fair amount of time following him on his routine for, say, one day. And then the next day, maybe some variation. But Wenders really wants us to settle into Hirayama’s world, and we follow him around for multiple days, seemingly nothing of note happening to him. Any small variation that does occur—places he goes to eat, for example—prove to be just as much a part of his regular routine, just not necessarily on a daily cadence.

Watching this movie, I found myself thinking about the surprise #1 movie on the 2022 Sight and Sound list of the best movies of all time: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both movies exist to make us feel as though we are living a person’s life with them. The key difference between Perfect Days is that we follow the character outside his home. He spends a lot of time driving through the mass of steel and pavement that is Tokyo—with a great many angles on the 2,080-foot Tokyo Skytree—and even more time cleaning toilets. But, many of these toilets are in city parks, small urban oases of lush greenery. And, in sharp contrast to Jeanne Dielman, whose point of view is ultimately bleak, Hirayama is a deeply contented man, living a simple life to which he is utterly suited. He is a man of so few words, he utters almost nothing in the film’s first 45 minutes.

And, over time, small details creep into notice. Other people passing through his orbit, using the toilets, indicate in very subtle ways how they think of him as dirty. When Hirayama finds a lost little boy and takes him by the hand to find his mother, the mother pays no attention to Hirayama and immediately disinfects the boy’s hands. I must admit to some ambivalence about this depiction, myself. I would also want to wash my hands immediately after, say, shaking the hand of a guy I knew just spent all day cleaning toilets.

Granted, there could be a cultural difference here. Hirayama cleans an astonishing number of single occupancy public toilets, and at least as depicted here, they look remarkably clean even before he gets to them. Whether this is typical of Japanese society or just a contrivance of this film, I have no idea. I just know that if these toilets were in the United States, they would look like a sewer exploded inside them within hours.

Hirayama indicates a tendency to notice and appreciate small pleasures, often while he’s doing his work. He takes photos, with an old camera that uses film, of branches overhead from his lunch bench in the park. He appreciates colorful reflective light under an overhanging roof of a toilet next to a busy street. The point is, if you are receptive to the specificity of what Perfect Days has to offer, it takes on a warmly compelling quality.

And, eventually, certain character details emerge. Hirayama’s young niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano), shows up unexpectedly, having run away from home. Hirayama is a man of so few words, he accepts this stoically, although he does call his sister soon enough. If this were an American movie, the niece would show up on day two. Here, the movie must be half over before she appears, interrupting Hirayama’s comfortable routine, but in a way that he accepts with passive grace.

Perfect Days is somewhat long, particularly at the pace it unfolds, at two hours and three minutes (counting the credits). But two key scenes occur in the last quarter of the film, and I am unconvinced that their impact would be quite as effective if we hadn’t spent all that time with him beorehand. One of them involves his sister, and one involves the ex-husband of the lady who runs one of the restaurants he frequents. Neither of them are major surprises—nothing in Perfect Days is jarring—but neither of the scenes that unfold are quite expected either. In a way, they just further enrich Hirayama’s world, whis is explicitly described to Niko as wholly separate from her mother’s. I found them to be unexpectedly, almost sneakily moving.

They don’t particularly change the mood, either. Perfect Days takes on a tone that evokes those days you spent out and about in a solitude you find yourself particularly enjoying. Hirayama has made that his way of life. We’ve just been granted the privilege of a brief visit into his world.

*It’s a lovely day in the park. And in toilets.*

Overall: B+