INDEX
Now is Now, and Next is Next.”
“PERFECT DAYS” attempts to capture this faint awareness, which seems so obvious and therefore so difficult to touch, as a film, an interweaving of light, shadow, and sound. When Hirayama’s niece Nico (*), who suddenly throws up memories of her own past, visits, the two engage in the following conversation. The following conversation between the two is one of the most beautiful and poetic scenes in the film.
(As they pedal their bicycles side by side)
Hirayama: “This world is really many worlds.
There are worlds that seem to be connected, but are not.
The world I am in is different from the world Nico’s mom is in.”
Nico: “What about me? Which world am I in?”
Hirayama (stops bicycle) “……”
Nico (getting off the bicycle and looking at the flow of Sumida River in front of him) “Is this the ocean if you go all the way here?”
Hirayama “Yes, the ocean.”
Nico “Wanna go?
Hirayama “…… next time”.
Nico “When is the next time?”
Hirayama (looking at Nico) “Next time, now is now”.
Nico (ruminating) “…… next time, now now now”
They (getting on the bike again, zigzagging alongside each other) “Now this time, now now that”.
*Fans of Wenders and Lou Reed will have to feel a clear homage to this naming.
Hirayama spends his days in an unchanging routine, but at the same time, because of this, he is more sensitive than anyone else to what is changing. Although it may seem that he simply wants to continue his unchanging, closed circle world, he himself, somewhere in his heart tied to the memories of the past, may be longing for small changes, and with these changes, he may be thinking about rowing into a “new, unchanging routine. Perhaps the music and books he loves surround him, not so much for the stability of the unchanging routine, but rather to bring him to a moment when his heart is shaken in spite of himself.
