Perfect Days a Film by Wim Wenders

I loved Wim Wenders when I was twenty. I moved between Barriera di Milano and Settimo Torinese, between rehearsals and concerts with The Stand (we played Dinosaur Jr., R.E.M., Husker Du, and other American stuff) and my early steps in what was then called Laboratorio Teatro Settimo. At Teatro Garybaldi, I proudly carried my Telecaster, which I still own, with naive pride.

 https://youtu.be/QzZBbX5A1FA?feature=shared

Back then, there was no streaming or Spotify, and films had to be bought or rented on VHS (for my daughter's peers: VHS = video version of audiocassettes). Before the arrival of BlockBuster franchises (now extinct), there was a small downtown store that rented avant-garde films, experimental films, and art films. Art cinemas also existed, programming gems from international cinema. The cinema library, housed in the former San Pietro in Vincoli cemetery, offered essays and valuable information.

 

From what I remember reading in one of his interviews, the now 78-year-old Wim Wenders began making films out of his love for rock. His initial steps in the world of cinema involved creating long takes and road movies accompanied by rock soundtracks.

 

More humbly, I thought of getting into theater for the same reason. After growing up listening to the 73-year-old Peter Gabriel's "The Battle of Epping Forest," of which I constructed a story without understanding all the words ("He employed me as a karma mechanic, with overall charms...").

 

In his interview, Wim argued that understanding the words in music was not important; the true meaning comes through the sound, like magic, and, like in a mantra, the meaning of the words can be an obstacle.

 

In Perfect Days, there are very few words. Hirayama speaks when necessary and drags us, day after day, into his perfect, minimal, and comforting routine. On this ground, a progression of incursions develops, you could say "spin-ins," stories related to his present, past, and future, lost friends, possible loves, unrealized fatherhood. These incursions open for a moment like small moments of light among the leaves of his "friendly tree."

 

Perfect Days comes to me today, more than twenty years after my passion for the German director, as a film to be seen multiple times, just as I did with Tokyo Ga, another masterpiece of his, a tribute to the Japanese world and director Yasujirō Ozu, which came out when I had just come of age.

 

In this film, the Japanese world, always somewhat distant from ours, intersects with ours with simplicity and extreme humility, qualities to which perhaps we are no longer accustomed. In fact, in a perfect counterpoint to my feelings, my seatmate whispers to his companion, "It's boring."

 

An exchange of lines in the script that Wenders wrote together with Takuma Takasaki gives us one of the keys to the film and explains my neighbor's boredom:

- There are different worlds, but not all are connected, mine and your mother's are not.

- And what world is mine, uncle?

(Silence)

Of course, there would be many other things to write about this masterpiece and its protagonist: dreams, meticulous passion for small stray plants, the protagonist's love for literature and rock music, the zen search for perfection even in a job despised by many ("do you really clean the bathrooms?"). All facets interpreted by the masterful KÔJI YAKUSHO, best actor award winner at the Cannes Film Festival for this film. But also the delicate aesthetic sense of photography, the choice of 4:3, Wenders' cameo.

Among the many messages, connections, and possible interpretations, I allow myself to report this: you might want to keep your cassette tapes and VHS (even in 4:3), they will be useful when the gasoline runs out.