Wed April 24th at 4:00pm and 7:00pm
Perfect Days is a 2023 co-production between Japan and Germany, directed by Wim Wenders. This Oscar-nominated Japanese drama gently excavates the life of a toilet cleaner, and the shadows that lurk inside.
The film competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on 25 May and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Actor Award for Koji Yakusho. It was nominated for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, becoming the first film not directed by a Japanese filmmaker to be nominated as the Japanese entry.
Directed by Wim Wenders
Written by Takuma Takasaki and Wim Wenders
Starring Koji Yakusho
Review: Time Magazine
“The more complex and threatening the greater world seems, the more we seek to patrol the borders of our own lives. If you spend any time at all on social media, or even if you don’t, you might feel as if you’re doing modern life all wrong if you’re not decluttering your house, editing your closet down to a single beige capsule, carving out meditation time in the middle of a stressful day. The pressure to live simply is almost unbearable.
The antidote is Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, a movie as transcendent as a zephyr. The extraordinary Japanese actor Koji Yakusho plays Hirayama, whose life, it may seem at first, is defined by his job: he cleans public toilets in Tokyo, and every day he zips himself into a blue jumpsuit (The Tokyo Toilet is emblazoned across the back, jaunty as the name of a sports team), retrieves his keys and flip phone from a narrow shelf in the entryway of his compact apartment, and drives through the city making his rounds. To New Yorkers, in particular, the toilet facilities under Hirayama’s purview probably look pretty clean to begin with. Even so, he polishes mirrors to a sterling gleam, wipes down faucets and levers with care, and inspects a toilet’s underside with a small mirror to ensure he’s scrubbed every inch of it…”
 
