Perfect Days review

Every so often a movie comes along and I sit down and find a way to watch it. This was the case for Perfect Days (trailer). For a variety of reasons I have a hard time sitting down and picking out a movie to watch. Likewise I don’t enjoy writing movie reviews, it reminds me too much of writing book reports in school. But I found this movie not by stumbling upon it randomly but recommended to me by a blog post on TYWKIWDBI.

Released in 2023, it was directed by Wim Wenders and stars Kôji Yakusho, who plays Hirayama who cleans toilets in Japan. Not much happens in the film, we see him wake up and go to work and listen to tape cassettes. He lives alone. We see a few encounters outside of his otherwise ordinary life but the movie is about someone who is, well, rather normal. Being set in Japan, we get to see what living in Japan is like. This might seem again boring, but also fascinating. Not every movie we watch need be so exciting.