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Wim Wenders's latest movie is unlikely to win an Oscar on Sunday, yet I suspect Perfect Days will be watched and contemplated for many years to come.

It’s a simple story told quietly, creating a space for everyone to find their own meaning. For me, it revealed an unexpected and comforting truth about growing old.

The action, or perhaps more accurately, the non-action, takes place over a week or two in the life of Hirayama, a sixty-something toilet cleaner in an outer district of Tokyo. He wakes early alone each day on the floor of his narrow, spartan room and rolls up his futon

The camera rarely leaves him as we follow his daily routine - brush teeth, canned coffee, drive van, clean toilets fastidiously, lunch in the park, communal bath, street cafe for dinner, read under a lamp, and sleep.

There is little dialogue and less storyline, and each day he repeats his Groundhog Day routine, scrubbing toilet bowls meticulously until they gleam. 

In less expert hands, this could have been a soul-destroying film to endure, yet Wenders infuses every crack of Hirayama’s routine with humor, beauty, and joy, to create a truly life-affirming experience. 

I watched Perfect Days last night in the theater. Before the film started, Wenders and his lead actor Koji Yakusho, who won best actor at Cannes for his performance, gave a short introduction to thank the audience. The men stood quietly side by side, smiling warmly with their eyes. Wenders explained how the movie was inspired by ‘komorebi’ ( the original title for the film) which literally means “sunlight leaking through trees” but also suggests a much larger philosophy.

Komorebi reflects the very unique, almost romantic love of the Japanese for nature, but also the importance of pausing often to notice and appreciate the tiny moments of beauty all around us. It’s another example of a Japanese word we need in our own language - like ikigai (life value) and irusu (pretending not to be home when somebody rings your doorbell). 

Hirayama not only understands Komorebi, but he effortlessly expresses it through his every gesture and impish smile. At lunchtime, he sits in the park and takes photographs with an old camera of the dappled sunlight leaking through the leaves above from the same tree. Every week he develops the 35mm film and keeps only the best photographs of his tree in a memory box. He saves tiny saplings from the parks and brings them home to nurture lovingly. Even at night, his black-and-white dreams feature shimmering branches and leaves.

There’s a delightful Wenders visual moment in the middle of the movie that is easy to miss. The cleaner is busy inside a cubicle polishing a toilet when he hears voices outside. He pauses and looks up to watch the blurry-colored figures of the passers-by, reflected on the toilet's ceiling. If you look for it, sunlight is always leaking through trees. 

Komorebi is not only about nature though. Hirayama unconsciously carves out a distinctly analog path within an overwhelmingly digital city. In addition to his 35mm film prints, he devours paperback books at home and in restaurants, and above all he cherishes his collection of 1970s cassette tapes, which he inserts every time he drives his van. The cassettes provide a loving and classically Wenders soundtrack: Van Morrison, Otis Redding, Jagger, Simone and of course Lou Reed’s eponymous ‘Perfect Day’.

Hirayama lives a simple and modest life, but he is not alone, and he finds many small ways to enjoy human connection. He is firm but kind to his young and unhinged co-worker, whose girlfriend becomes infatuated with the beauty of the older man’s cassettes. He harbors a secret love for the proprietor of his favorite restaurant and plays tic-tac-toe with a stranger he never meets, hiding a sheet of paper daily in one of the toilets he cleans.

When his teenage niece turns up unannounced for a few days, he quietly gives her the calm love she needs. She can’t understand why her uncle lives so modestly, disconnected from her wealthy mother, and she impatiently wants to know what ‘her world’ is. He gently offers wisdom, “Next time is next time. Now is now,” which she finds reassuring. This line, and all of his gentle kindness, we begin to understand, suggests the true meaning of Komorebi.

In a sense, this “now is now” philosophy was also infused into how the film was made. There was no time for rehearsals, and the whole shoot took only 17 days. Yakusho had no idea that his role would be mostly silent until the script arrived. The lack of dialogue puts much more weight on the intimacy of the actors’ expressions and movements. 

The film has an interesting backstory. During the pandemic, Wenders was upset about the break-down of the ‘sense of common good’ in Germany, and hearing this, Koji Yanai, billionaire scion of the Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo, reached out. 

Yanai had launched The Tokyo Toilets, a public-private renovation initiative in Shibuya, to push the design limits for public toilets. The 17 toilets feature designs by celebrated Japanese architects, including Toyo Ito and Tadao Ando. Yanai was angling for a short documentary, but Wenders was so inspired by the designs, including a breathtaking set of three transparent cubicles that turn opaque when the user locks the door, but also by this very Japanese commitment to public responsibility, he wanted to make a feature-length film.

Is it a realistic portrait of working-class life? Perhaps not. The toilets Hirayama must clean are far less stomach-churning than the average Japanese toilet, and nothing compared to those a British or American worker might have to endure. Wenders admits: “I did idealize Japan a little bit in this movie and in this character…I’m not sure if a man like this really exists – but I think he should…Just as I needed angels to show Berlin [in Wings of Desire], I needed a caretaker for these toilets.”

As with my other two favorite Wenders movies - Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas - the director provides long stretches of silent beauty for us to reflect on our own daily lives. Because we spend so much time in Hirayma’s shoes, the movie becomes a Rorschach test; we all take out something slightly different, depending on how we feel about experiencing his life.

For me, Perfect Days asks a big and important question. It’s related to Komorebi, and the importance of noticing the everyday beauty in things, but it also goes further. The question I kept asking myself on the drive home was this: “Could I be happy living Hirayama’s life, and if so, what are the implications of this for how I live my life today?”

I should declare that I’m 52 years old and increasingly curious about growing old gracefully. It doesn’t scare me; in fact, it excites me. Just as there’s an art to being young, and also to succeeding in mid-life, there must certainly be better ways to glide into old age. Here in Hirayama is a man who appears to be doing it well, or at least happily, and with very modest means or expectations.

So to be even more precise, the critical question the film asks each of us, is how will we cope if we end up poor and alone in our old age? This isn’t an academic question; it could happen to all of us. Hirayama has very little money, few possessions, no partner or children, and has to wake up early to clean public toilets. By most measures of society, he is failing. And yet he appears to be growing old happily and gracefully. He seems at least as happy as most sixty-somethings we know.

Why is this such a critical question to ask ourselves, early and often? Because if we believe we will be ‘happy enough’ in old age, even if we end up single, poor, and taking pride in a simple job, then this is very useful to know as early as possible. This knowledge might give us great consolation today, and reduce our fear of an uncertain future. It should help us to fully enjoy the present, knowing that even a ‘bad’ future scenario might actually be rather enjoyable.

We might watch and rewatch this meditation on Komorebi for the same reason we return to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. They remind us that our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude. As Frankl writes, “The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

The art of living has always fascinated me, and in 2020 I attempted to share my own personal take on it, in a short novel titled Path: A Story of Love, A Guide to Life. My idea was to craft a boy-meets-girl love story that my own children might pick up and read for fun, but to root the story quite explicitly in a guide to life, which they might turn to, should they ever start looking for something. The book was illustrated beautifully by my eldest son Lawrence, a professional artist.

I mention it because, in so many uncanny ways, Hirayama perfectly expresses the guide to life embedded in the book: Take a path and walk it with a good mind and good choices. Path all rests on a foundation of three minds: The Grateful Mind (“Savor it all, every day, and always feel lucky”), The Compassionate Mind (“We must care and do more if possible, and it’s always possible”), and The Observing Mind (“Neither chase nor avoid things but accept them and be there in the middle”).

Grateful, Compassionate, Observing. Hirayama has learned the art of balancing all three, with grace and humor.

Perfect Days never suggests that all our days will be perfect. No amount of possessions or financial security can ever guarantee this. There are no perfect days. Hirayama’s face beautifully communicates this in the very final scene of the film, as Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ plays on his cassette player. Every day will bring joy, sadness, strength, laughter, loneliness, and love; all we can do is make the most of today. 

Next time is next time. Now is now.

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