My Favourite Film of 2024 is About A Toilet Cleaner in Tokyo.

A short musing for the week that's in it.

Something a lot of people I know (including myself) struggle with is the need to be special. Wanting to be special is the worst kind of desire. Worse than wanting to be rich, successful, popular, special is something that most people are not. And those who are, never longed for it, they just are. It is usually lovers of stories who suffer this afflication because stories are usually about special people or circumstances. The brilliant Hermione Granger, the tortured Evelyn Hugo, the hilarious Chandler Bing. Despite not being about their specialness, these characters have a shine to them that average person does not. Hirayama (played by the outstanding Kôji Yakusho) is not shiny. He is not particularly funny, intelligent or tortured. He doesn’t have an unusual or interesting job, he cleans the public toilets of Tokyo. His hobbies are the same as everyone else’s; reading, listening to music. He eats instant noodles, he takes pictures of trees on his film camera on his lunch break. Yet I am transfixed by him every time I watch Perfect Days (2024), directed by Wim Wenders.

On the outset, the film is very simple. It follows a man called Hirayama as he goes through his daily routine. He shaves, he drinks canned coffee from the vending machine outside of his tiny home, he listens to Lou Reed as he drives to work. He cleans toilets with great dedication, helping lost children find their parents and giving his slacker co-worker the use of his van so he can impress his girlfriend. He eats dinner in an underground train station and watches baseball. He reads Faulkner before bed. During the weekend, he buys a new book from the bargain shelf of a secondhand bookshop, he buys a new roll of film, he cleans his apartment, he goes for dinner at a small restaurant, where, if he’s lucky, the owner will sing for him. There is a loose plot, a niece arrives, he drinks beer with a man about to die but these feel like interruptions rather than a fulcrum. Hirayama certainly doesn’t have a perfect life, he is lonely, it’s clear. He doesn’t have a lot of money and his childhood was unhappy leading to a rift between him and his sister. But he makes each of his days perfect, collecting Bonsai trees, looking at the sky and smiling, listening to music, making time for people.

Thomas Flight made a great video essay comparing The Bear and Perfect Days. He talks about how the main theme of The Bear (and that of the art Hollywood produces more generally) is ambition. Whereas, the central feeling of Perfect Days is that of satisfaction. My favourite film of 2023 was Everything Everywhere All At Once (2023) another film about specialness and desire. Until I watched Wenders film, I didn’t realise that you could make beautiful art about boring lives. Of course it’s a realisation that many have had before me, Eavan Boland, for example, comes to mind. The only other film that is about repeating the same day over and over again is Groundhog Day, and although I haven’t seen it, I don’t think it’s trying to make a philosophical point about satisfaction and The Good Life.

From the outset, it might seem like the film could be in danger of being bloated but it is tight and controlled the entire time. Each object in the frame is there for a reason. For example, Hirayama’s small bedroom is lined with floor to ceiling books. If the film was a rom-com, this could just be because it looks really fucking cool but halfway through the film, we see Hirayama finish his book, put it on the shelf and buy a new one. Hirayama, and the film-makers, do nothing ‘just because’. Although the film is small, quiet, uneventful, so much care and attention has gone into it. The soundtrack is ridiculously good, consisting of 70’s American and Japanese dream pop and rock. Two of my favourite letterboxd reviews of the film are:

Another thing that makes the movie great is it’s simplistic yet sophisticated wardrobe and mise-en-scéne. The almost Wes Anderson-esque bookshop, well-tailored shirts, high quality chino’s, beautiful vintage bicycle and cosy, little restaurant all help to contribute to the idea that Hirayama curates his life with beauty and comfort in mind. What other company in the world screams Japanese style combined with practicality more than Uniqlo? It just so happens that the film is sponsored by Uniqlo, it was supposed to basically be a glorified marketing campaign, advertising the new public toilets that they are funding in Tokyo!!

Tokyo itself is thrown open to the world. And not just the busy streets filled with grey-suited business men and over-head shots of complicated intersections, but the quieter neighbourhoods too. Bridges at sunset, weed infested steps that you can drink cheap beer on, temples, playgrounds. It portrays the largest city that has ever existed in history as a collection of regular people living their regular lives. Despite the large geographical space that Hirayama travels everyday, you get the sense that he is traversing a small town he has come to know (along with its inhabitants) like the back of his hand.

I don’t think its dramatic to say the film changed my life. It’s exactly what I’ve been searching for, even if I didn’t know it. A manifesto on how to live, devoid of political, career or romantic idealism. It reminded me of the Japanese tv show “Old Enough”, where watching small children carrying out domestic tasks fascinated and enthralled me. How lovely it must be to be five years old and picking up milk from the shop for your mother. How lovely it must be to feel content with your life, to love art and stories but not to have this unrelenting desire to be special. That is actually special.

If you’ve watched Perfect Days and loved it, another film I would recommend you watch is Fallen Leaves (2023) by Aki Kaurismäki. I will be watching Perfect Days this evening because the message of satisfaction and ordinary beauty is one that I need to hear going in to 2025.

Happy New Year!!

Love

Libs x

(P.S. This year I decided to take my Substack more seriously and since then, I’ve managed to triple my subscribers. Thank you very much to everyone who has read this far down, and for all the other times you read this far into my pieces. I’m proud of the work I’m doing here but I don’t for one second take for granted the many people who support and encourage me. It means the world to me.)