Last Wim Wenders movie,Perfect Daysshows the daily newspaper of Hirayama, a public toilet maintenance officer in Tokyo. Without surpassing the poetry ofParis Texas, whose fulgurances were born of silences and their ruptures, the German director drew closer to the splendor of the 1984 Palm Gold. He thus returns to his origins with a silent character whose personality reveals itself at the margin. Without ever falling into the pathos or the social fresco with nostalgic hints,Perfect Daysoffers another look; that of a sensitive reflection on the epiphanies of being.
You just keep me hanging on
WithPerfect Days, Wim Wendersopts for the 4/3 on-screen ratio, which is no coincidence since it is the format of silent cinema which will be the majority until the late 1920s. A choice that also articulates with the actor behind Hirayama. Awarded in Cannes last year for his interpretation,Koji Yakushois customary in roles where speech is essentially reserved. InEel (1996) of Shobei Imamura, after the murder of his wife, his character is reduced to confide in this tamed animal in prison. Faithful of Kurosawa, the 67-year-old Japanese actor has always cultivated a sense of measure. With this format focused on essentials, Wim Wenders opens a window on the intimacy of a simple man, to real happiness but to precarious balance. Like the hero of the filmThe Taste of Saké(1962) by Yasujirö Ozu, popular filmmaker and attentive observer of the torments of Japanese soul, Wim Wenders pays tribute to the master by choosing to name his character Hirayama.
InPerfect days, the life of Hirayama is dictated by rigour and punctuated like music paper. Every morning he folds his bed, toilets and, when he comes out on the porch of his house, he raises his head towards the sun. It's kind of his first greeting to the aurora. He takes the same caffeine drink every day to the distributor, which seems to him entirely dedicated, he fastens his belt and chooses the cassette to insert into his autoradio. Hirayama is out of time, he knows neither spotify nor smartphones; at least they are perfectly indifferent to him, without any adhesion. It is a person hermetic to the commercial injunctions of the consumer company. He is not prone to speculation: when his colleague insists on selling his collection tapes, he remains stoic. However, its marginality does not prevent it from having otherwise more sincere social interactions.
After cleaning the city's toilets with thoroughness, he washes himself from work to the baths and then takes a small step in a boxwood where one can see a sumos fight or a baseball game on television. Every night, fatigue settles down as he reads news, then puts the glasses on his book before giving in to sleep. The next day, it's always the same gestures that draw his daily life... with a few exceptions.
And this old world is a new world
Yet, despite the routine, snippets of life will be as many variations of a well-known score. First there are these ephemeral encounters which, like the news that Hirayama reads every night, are imaginary breaches that open and then close immediately. Whatever! If they allow Hirayuma to enjoy them just to touch them, it is essential. It is also the image of these young Japanese maple shoots that Hirayuma treats every day. Each of its cuttings remains in the shrub state but covers the potential of a secular tree. Minimalist,Perfect Daysprefers to let the viewer appreciate the signs by a game focused on redundancy.
The title of the film sheds light on these small moments of futile daily life which are therefore indispensable. In the singular of the songPerfect Day, iconic piece by Lou Reed, Wim Wenders prefers pluralPerfect days.A stolen kiss, a cross-eyed look, a niece who shows up unannounced, so many pleasures that one would like the enjoyment to be eternal. At one of the few moments in the film where Hirayama expresses himself, he sums up the dialectic of life:
« The world is made of many worlds. Some are connected, others are not. »
There is not one and the same reality but infinity. Born of the real or of the imaginary, they are seizing lines, as opposed to others, parallel, that will never cross. This is also the subject that Wim Wenders outlines with intelligence on Art and its reception. Like the crude art, born from the polemic light of Jean Dubuffet's works in 1944, Japan has an untranslatable term to transcribe these marginal artistic practices.
Feeling good?
Komorebimeans the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees. By extension, the inner light that passes through the cracks of the being is detected. In the words of Michel Ragon, libertarian writer and historian of proletarian literature, it is «a particular poetic, dream or even an anarchizing constellation». And on this point, Hirayama is deeply influenced by anarchism by his refusal to integrate into a primitive system imposed by society. There are no contradictions between the intellect and the working class. It is the image of this sequence where he stays straight when his sister asks him if he really washes toilets to live. Although affected, Hirayama does not respond to any of the social projections.
Hirayama, however, is not alienated and its balance draws from its daily asceticism. Every day Hirayama takes a shot with a disposable device. He photographed the top of the trees from which he took the shoots. And these black and white images go through the whole film like alternative realities, secretly kept in dated boxes and carefully stacked in a closet. These works free themselves from their audience and from any artistic appropriation as a merchant. These photos, some of which are immediately destroyed – without hesitation – by Hirayama are dreamlike territories, passages to hidden but essential places.
It's the light that shows the veins. By extension, it's the very sensitivity of Hirayama who paradoxically externalizes within privacy: these photos are light rays kept in the shadow of the home. «When two shadows overlap, are they blacker? » interview one of the characters in the film at random during a night meeting. WithPerfect Days,Wim Wenders reminds us with poetry that there is never shadow without light. Until this radiant final sequence where soundsFeeling Goodby Nina Simone, a mirror of social segregation and ambivalence of a daily revolt to flourish against this very real world.
With absolute serenity and poetic simplicity, this quasi-mutical feel good movie where playlist acts as a soliloque personifies the « Komorebi ». The walk is intimate, the little nothings rhythm the daily and the moment lives in the present. Kōji Yakusho didn't steal his male performance price! 🌿🌿🌿
[...] chronique sur MaG by KillerSev7en after his visit to Cannes last year, Perfect Days returns to the [...]