The Hi-Desert Cultural Center is proud to present a special screening of ENO, the first-ever generative documentary film in a one-night-only event featuring an introduction by Orian Williams, one of the revolutionary film’s producers.
Perfect Days—Savoring perfection of the fleeting and ephemeral
Filmed in only 16 days and earning the coveted Best Actor award at Cannes, Perfect Days tells the story of a quiet and alert man who lives in solitude in one of the world’s densest cities, vacillating between beatific contentment and cold dread.
After watching Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days on my own last year, I recommended it to my wife as something special that she should watch herself. Her busy schedule meant that she did not get around to it until an airplane ride from Palm Springs to New York. From the air, I got a text letting me know that she was finally watching the film, but that the image appeared cropped and boxy. “It’s supposed to be like that,” I reassured her. “You’ll see. It makes sense.”
In the run-up to the 2020 Olympic Games, the celebrated German filmmaker Wim Wenders was approached by the city of Tokyo to make a documentary-style film about a series of new, architecturally impressive toilets it had commissioned. Wenders has a long history with Tokyo that goes back to his 1985 film Tokyo-Ga!. Narrated by Wenders, it finds him roaming the streets of the city and following his eye, sampling pachinko machines and other quintessentially Japanese experiences. It’s also notable for being one of the very few times that his fellow filmmaker and Tokyo-obsessive Chris Marker, the elusive director of Le Jetée and San Soleil, ever appeared on camera. The purpose of Wenders’ visit to Tokyo was to produce a portrait of his hero, Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, who had passed away about twenty years prior. With the maestro unavailable, Wenders interviews his collaborators and searches for glimpses of Ozu’s bygone world in the gleaming Tokyo of the 1980s. Highly influential and popular, Ozu’s minimalistic dramas tended to concern themselves with ordinary Japanese characters dealing with relatable issues, especially the intergenerational tension that was familiar to many Japanese in the years after World War 2 as the country entered into a new era, driven by American-style capitalism. Ozu favored a distinctly lower camera angle than was common in films from Hollywood or Europe, meant to evoke the perspective of a person sitting on a traditional Japanese tatami mat.
This is the perspective that found its way into Perfect Days many years later, in the same boxy 4:3 ratio that Ozu used in films like Tokyo Story and Late Spring. Not only are the perspective and the frame evocative of the sensibilities of a bygone era, but the film’s character, Hirayama, is similarly out of step with the times.
Back to the toilets. Wenders took his invitation to make a film about Tokyo’s new public restrooms seriously, but decided that he’d rather make a narrative film using the toilets as a setting. A strange seed to be sure, but a seed that bore incredible fruit. Filmed in only sixteen days with the legendary actor Koji Yakusho as Hirayama, Perfect Days tells the story of a quiet and alert man who lives in solitude in one of the world’s densest cities, vacillating between beatific contentment and cold dread. For his performance as Hirayama, Yakusho earned the award for Best Actor at Cannes. Hirayama’s life is an exercise in routine and observation, with meticulous care and attention paid to his surroundings and the people who pass through his orbit. He begins his day in a spare bachelor’s apartment, lined with nearly organized shelves of books and a treasured collection of cassette tapes. Hirayama dresses, buys coffee from a vending machine, and heads to work in his van full of cleaning supplies, listening to one of his many cassettes. He relishes his morning commute, which is soundtracked with music that must be from his youth: artists like Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Otis Redding. In addition to cleaning and music, Hirayama has a third passion: photography. He keeps a 35mm Olympus point-and-shoot camera on his person at all times, taking pictures when something captures his eye, like the way sunlight passes through the branches of trees in the park. At night, Hirayama dreams these very same forms, flurries of sunlight shimmering and dancing through shadowy branches. The film’s original title was Komorebi, a Japanese word that describes this delicate natural phenomenon, as well as the human inclination to stop and savor the perfection of fleeting, ephemeral details. To appreciate Hirayama and the way he lives his life is to understand komorebi.
His apartment, a 4:3 box where characters in an Ozu film might have resided generations earlier, is where he spends hours dozing in the sun while listening to music, reading Henry Miller by the light of a lamp, or reviewing his latest batch of photos. Hirayama is discerning, tearing the rejects in half before filing his selects away. Has anyone else seen Hirayama’s photos? Will they ever be shown? It’s unclear, as impositions into his personal life by other people are jarring to him. When Hirayama does gravitate towards others, they tend to be as quiet or deep in the periphery as he is: a lost child, or a performing mime. He allows others, like an annoying but friendly co-worker, to approach him while offering only the barest engagement in return. He’s eager to help when he sees the need, but is quiet and cautious; we get the sense he may have been hurt by other people in some serious way. He’s imperfect, and not all of his days are good ones, but it seems like perfection remains a daily possibility. Perfection is tied to sensuality; few characters have delighted a ray of sunshine, a meal, or a soak in hot water like Hirayama does here. Lou Reed sings “You just keep me hanging on”, and Hirayama listens with a smile on his face, like a flower taking sustenance from the sun. When Hirayama is happy, the movie is like a warm bath; it’s hard not to love him and to share in his contentment, to feel like he’s someone who has figured out how to live. And when that contentment is challenged in ways big and small, we feel that too. Wordlessly conveyed by Koji Yakusho’s face and eyes are simultaneous feelings of joy and sorrow, the burden of noticing and feeling many things at once.
Hours later, I got a follow-up text from my wife: “Beautiful movie.” And it is. We may vary in our readings of Hirayama and whether or not his life is indeed a happy one, but it’s wonderful that we have a film like Perfect Days that can provoke these conversations.
MATTHEW CARON
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