Cinema - What Wim Wenders appreciates about Japan - new film "Perfect Days"
A man who cleans toilets, lives for the day and seems content with his simple life: this is the basic constellation in Wim Wenders' new feature film "Perfect Days". The 78-year-old filmmaker has made a meditative, quiet and touching film with a great leading actor. Koji Yakusho won the prize for best actor at the Cannes Film Festival.
"Perfect Days" is set in Tokyo and tells the story of a man called Hirayama (Koji Yakusho). He works as a toilet cleaner, spends a lot of time alone, likes to read and listens to rock music - preferably on cassettes that he listens to in his minibus on the way to work.
To the sound of The Animals, Patti Smith or Velvet Underground, viewers see his bus driving along the streets of Tokyo - and they accompany Hirayama on his work in particularly beautifully designed toilets. As part of "The Tokyo Toilet" project, star architects have designed toilets in Tokyo. One, for example, has colorful, transparent doors that become opaque as soon as you close them.
"These were really dreams of toilets," Wenders told dpa. "If you could imagine: Where would you like to go to a quiet little place and do your business in the middle of the city - you couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than these little houses."
The common good has the highest priority in Japan
Gradually, viewers learn a little more about Hirayama's past. He actually comes from a privileged family. His sister is shocked when she finds out that he works as a cleaner.
Overall, service has a different significance in Japan, said Wenders. "Service to the community and the common good in general. The common good really sank during the pandemic... we all came back and there was less social support than ever before. And in Japan, the pandemic had just ended - and it was the opposite there."
All the visitors were happy and cleaned the toilets of their own accord, he said. "People were so happy that everything was finally accessible to everyone again and I said: let me make a movie about what a beautiful good the common good is, that's what the toilets were made for."
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Source: www.stern.de
