009: Perfect Days (Sound + Vision Edition)
As we briefly depart from the art of music videos to talk about another form of fleeting media, we come face to face with the quotidian in Wim Wenders' tender Tokyo masterpiece, Perfect Days.
We’re looking to linger on something a little longer this Sound + Vision Edition, but to save you 124 minutes (and a Mubi subscription), I’ve added the trailer below to give you a flavour of Wim Wenders’ latest flick, Perfect Days. Let's talk public toilets, baby.
This letter has sat in my drafts for a few months now, a small and reticent reminder that I haven’t put the proverbial pen to the proverbial paper in quite some time. I found myself caught in the tug between a longing to be a prolific and productive writer, and the reality of some sticky stasis, in part thanks to an abrupt ending in another realm of life, and in other part, due to what I can only describe as an impossible desire for absolute, complete, and certain per-fec-tion.
Of late, I have been trying to find a metric to capture emotional responses and reactions in numbers, or at the very least to translate something felt into something quantifiable. In the spirit of compromise, I have settled on a method of anecdote, a famously unreliable narrator that often wrangles with the truth, but swallows the wholeness of experience a little more conceptually than data and statistics.
This back-and-forth between wanting to archive something accurate and concise and instead documenting a tale more expansive and generous beckons forth something altogether more profound. It begs a question. Do we want to find the absolute perfect truth? That clear and distinct idea that Descartes meditated upon so soundly? The pursuit of something that is so self-evidently true that it cannot logically be doubted? Or do we want a story?
Reading before bed is a habit I have managed to drop in recent months. The smug feeling of putting time-in-bed-on-phone on hold and instead bending the spine of another form of cerebral entertainment is an activity matched by none, but the draw of small-screen-big-thoughts has a moth-y glum hum to it which is often difficult to ignore. The hygienic sleepers amongst us will know; blue light is best replaced by paper pages and closed eyes. That melatonin won’t generate itself, dear.
Hirayama, the protagonist of Perfect Days, takes heed of his daylight hours by honouring his nights. He is presented as a diligent, kind-eyed gentleman with an ease about him that often invites conversation he wishes not to engage in, spending his time working, resting, listening, and reading — eyes cast down, mind open wide. In many ways, nothing happens in this film. It is void of happenings. A happen-less chronicle. But in its quietude, it articulates a universal call to arms: leave content, become content.
“"This back-and-forth between wanting to archive something accurate and concise and instead documenting a tale more expansive and generous beckons forth something altogether more profound. It begs a question.”
In many ways, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is an exercise in recording the unremarkable, with the very charm of Hirayama’s undertakings lying in their simple and domestic banality. We are invited as observers to take the trappings of our own everyday and decorate them with the gleaming jewels of something altogether more majestic. It really doesn’t matter how busy your day-to-day is or how far your hand reaches round the corner of opportunity. The perfection you seek is found in the absolute truth you find within the bursting seams of your own life-living. The tall tales we are sold on-the-line are far from the gospel we’re searching for, but sometimes it’s best to lean in, sit back, and just listen to the story.
And after all that, we didn’t speak once about public toilets! Perhaps I’m staying true to the anti-capitalist lurking inside me. I maintain that work is (or should be) a small part of our big lives, and so Hirayama’s dreams, much like mine, lie far further than the shackles of labour. Now, listen to Perfect Day by Lou Reed!