Director Wim Wenders’ latest film, “PERFECT DAYS,” is set to be released on December 22nd (Friday). Set in Tokyo, the film portrays the daily life of a janitor, and it has already garnered high acclaim, with lead actor Koji Yakusho receiving the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Music director and critic Yuji Shibasaki, who has long held a deep appreciation for the use of music in Wenders’ works, delves into the charm of the film in this installment of the series “The Art of Selection: Crafting Films through Music,” the 9th edition.
*Note: This article contains descriptions related to the content of the film. Please be aware of this before proceeding.
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Music in Wim Wenders’ Films
Until a certain point in my life, the act of watching a Wim Wenders film had a significant meaning for me as an experience that included “listening to the gems of music that Wim Wenders selected and orchestrated. The rock and pop masterpieces scattered throughout his early films, such as “The Goalkeeper’s Fears,” “Alice in the City,” and “An American Friend,” served as the best introduction to the actual songs and artists used in the films, and also demonstrated how creative the existing music could be for the films. It was also a vivid reminder of the creative potential of existing music for film. The experience of immersing myself in the scores that great musicians such as Jürgen Knepper and Ry Cooder contributed to his films was also deeply moving, something I don’t often get from the work of other directors. In retrospect, one of the main reasons I am writing this series as a person who loves music and film equally is that I was fascinated by the brilliance of his films and the music that resonated within them.
His forthcoming new film, PERFECT DAYS, is a brilliant reintroduction to Wenders’s sound directorial genius, which I have somewhat forgotten of late. In fact, if I may be so bold as to say so, this film is a clear standout in his recent filmography, in which it must be said that he has continued to make films that are somehow awkward, and from a certain point of view, it is somewhat of a “return to his roots.
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Exploring the Essence of Everyday Minimalism in Tokyo
This film is packed with noteworthy topics, the most notable of which is that it stars the famous actor Koji Yakusho and was filmed entirely in Tokyo. The film is based on the “THE TOKYO TOILET” project, a project to revitalize public toilets in Shibuya Ward with innovative designs.
The majority of the film is a routine depiction of Hirayama’s daily routine. Living in an old apartment in Oshiage overlooking the Tokyo Sky Tree, he wakes up at a certain time every morning and prepares himself in a certain order. After drinking the same can of coffee as usual, he gets into a small van packed with his work gear and takes his usual route to work. Once he arrives at the job site, he carefully and efficiently cleans the restrooms, just as he did yesterday and the day before. During his lunch break, he eats lunch in the precincts of the same shrine every day and captures the light and shadows pouring from the grove of trees with his old film camera. Some of the plants he grows at home seem to have been given to him from sprouts growing on the shrine grounds. He listens appropriately to the chatter of his young colleagues, but he is a quiet man. His colleagues call him eccentric, but on the other hand, he is strangely dependable.
When he finishes work, he goes straight home and immediately heads for the neighborhood bathhouse. He exchanges friendly glances with the old people who frequent the bathhouse, but he is still a man of few words. In the evening, he goes to his usual izakaya (Japanese-style pub) and enjoys dinner over a glass of chuhai. Before going to bed, he reads a paperback book, and when he starts to doze off, he turns off the light and goes to bed. Then he wakes up at the appointed time to the sound of the old woman across the street sweeping the path with a broom. It’s a repetition. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition. On my days off, nothing unusual happens. I do my laundry at the laundromat, send the photos I have taken of the grove to be developed, buy a 100-yen paperback book at a used bookstore, and settle down at a tavern that I only visit on holidays. And that’s it, over and over again. Over and over again.
In other words, this is a “minimalism of everyday life” that shows the regular life of a city dweller, similar to Jim Jarmusch’s recent film “Paterson” or Chantal Akerman’s ambitious film “Jeanne Dielmann, 1080 Brussels, 23 rue des Commerces”. Jeanne Dielmann, 1080 Brussels, 23 Rue des Commerces, and others. The rhythm of these non-dramatic, calm, and slow moving images is reminiscent of a series of road movies that Wenders himself once set as a milestone. The subtle stoicism that pervades the entire film and the calm yet warm observation of the seemingly solitary characters also strongly suggest an aesthetic that is common to his works from the 1970s to the 1990s.
