At last year’s festival in Cannes, France, it was as if there was a competition to write a more heartfelt greeting to the American director Jim Jarmusch. While the Finnish Aki Kaurismäki paid tribute to his “brother in battle”, with whom he dominated the world of art cinema throughout the 90s, with a scene from the film Karaoke blues, Wim Wenders seemed to respond directly to one of Jarmusch’s last works.
The film called Perfect Days, which will be shown in Czech cinemas from Thursday, is simple. It follows the everyday life of a Tokyo toilet cleaner who cares for the bowls and floors of these facilities as if it were a four-star hotel and not a public toilet. Even though Japanese toilets, as we will see countless times on the screen, are really more reminiscent of facilities in a luxury hotel in terms of design.
One of the best local actors, Koži Jakušo, who deservedly won an award for his nuanced performance in Cannes last year, is the engine of the film.
The Zen-like calmness of the protagonist and the emphasis on unobtrusive, calm artistic activities by amateurs will remind you of Jarmusch’s drama Paterson from 2016. In it, Adam Driver played a similarly collected bus driver who drives along marked routes, sits on benches and writes poetry. Although everything took place in the American town of Paterson, it was heavily influenced by Japan.
Wim Wenders, the 78-year-old German director of the films The Sky over Berlin or The Story of Lisbon, on the other hand, lets his Japanese hero listen to old rock from the 1970s from old audio cassettes. Songs like Perfect Day, to which the title refers, or the work of Patti Smith permeate the morning and evening rides of Tokyo.
While Jarmusch also dealt with the protagonist’s partner life, Wenders focuses on the loner. His hero uses an old analog camera to take pictures of treetops without looking through the viewfinder, and digs up small saplings from the soil to expand his bonsai collection.
However, unlike Jarmusch’s Paterson, Wenders remains too immersed in this somewhat clichéd view of Japan as a place imbued with Zen, calmness, and seclusion. Exaggerated pathos or banality of some scenes keeps the great Kodži Yakuša “afloat”, and Wenders always offers one well-hit moment that changes the emotional mood on the screen.
Nevertheless, one cannot get rid of the feeling that we are watching the work of an “old master” – but this time in a somewhat different sense. Wim Wenders made a plotless, audience-appreciative film with almost academic certainty. It moves in too safe a territory and plays it safe in places.
Film
Perfect days
Directed by Wim Wenders
Aerofilms, Czech premiere on March 28.
