Perfect Days ( now streaming on Hulu ) originated just like all films do – as a loving ode to the world’s most beautiful toilets. The Tokyo Toilet is a sort of urban renewal-slash-public art project, where architects designed 17 public restrooms in the city’s Shibuya ward, opening them in 2020. Producers originally invited Wim Wenders to direct short films about these beautiful little structures, but he and co-screenwriter Takuma Takasaki were instead inspired to make a feature about a man who cleans the toilets, which become a metaphor for finding beauty no matter where you look – even if it’s just, y’know, a place to eliminate human waste.
The Gist: Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) is a minimalist in a maximalist world. He lives by himself in the heart of Tokyo in a humble apartment without a shower or a refrigerator. He’s a living-breathing anachronism who listens to cassettes and uses an old point-and-shoot camera that takes actual film and doesn’t use a cell phone until three-quarters into the film – and it’s a flip phone.
His routine is methodical, but not obsessive, and I know that seems like splitting hairs, but his mannerisms are too soft, his nature too easygoing, to not note the difference. His rhythms are so ingrained, he doesn’t need an alarm – or he’s so sensitive, his alarm every morning may be the sounds of a neighbor woman lightly sweeping leaves from the sidewalk before dawn. She seems to have a methodical routine, too.
I wonder what her lif.
