Hirayama can’t help but look up. When he steps out of his apartment, when he’s on his lunch break in the park, and at any other random moment throughout the day when something catches his fancy, he’s noticeably looking up. But why is he so compelled to look up? After all, he literally cleans toilets all day. The answer lies at the heart of Wim Wenders’s newest film Perfect Days, set in Japan despite the director’s German heritage.

The film seeks to pierce the veil of Hirayama, but it simultaneously keeps him at arm’s length. See, Hirayama, played wonderfully by Koji Yakusho, barely speaks through most of the film’s 123 minute runtime. It’s a testament to Yakusho’s performance that we’re able to glean so much information about someone through such a quiet and un-showy performance. There are several moments when Yakusho could have oversold certain dramatic beats, but he mostly underplays them, aiming for more grounded emotional realism. It’s no big surprise that he won the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Perfect Days is a film that’s defined by routine. Hirayama essentially goes through the same motions every day: he’s woken not by an alarm, but the sound of a woman sweeping the street every day. He dresses and gets ready for work, making sure to carefully water his plants before leaving. He grabs a coffee from the vending machine outside his apartment, and listens to the classics on cassette tapes like Van Morrison and Nina Simone while in his work van. After his shift, he visits the same restaurant to people watch, a place where he’s known but can be left alone. In fact, in almost every instance when he has the chance to connect with someone, like at the secondhand bookstore he frequents about once a week, he shuns the opportunity.

Wenders, who wrote the screenplay with Takuma Takasaki, crucially does not spoon feed information to the audience, but Perfect Days mostly lacks any dramatic stakes until the final 30 minutes. Rather, we simply live in Hirayama’s world and absorb his way of seeing and connecting everything around him. Yes, there are minor hiccups along the way early on, but nothing totally upends Hirayama’s life, as usually happens in films defined by a character’s routine.

The most dramatic bent comes in the form of his much younger co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who is much less invested in his job and seeks to impress his crush Aya (Aoi Yamada). She seems more interested in Hirayama’s collection of cassettes. The music choices throughout Perfect Days are fine enough, but they heavily underline the emotions at any given moment. For example: the film’s title refers to a Lou Reed song, which plays after Hirayama has shared one of his favorite cassettes with Aya. They don’t derail the movie, but could have been handled with the same amount of subtlety as the rest of the film.

Despite its simple structure and relatively low stakes, I find myself no less entranced by Perfect Days. It’s a film that will reward viewers that give themselves over to it. It likely won’t rank amongst my favorite films of the year, but it’s one that I’ll continue to ruminate on for a while, potentially unpacking more and more on subsequent re-watches. And with an indelible performance from Koji Yakusho and sensible direction from Wim Wenders, I already look forward to it.

Perfect Days was screened as a Spotlight Selection at the 2023 Heartland International Film Fest. Neon will release it later at an unnamed date.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• Perfect Days beat out the likes of Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (amongst others) to be named Japan’s selection for International Feature. It will likely secure a nomination, and could be seen as the front-runner to win. Wim Wenders has never won an Oscar, so a narrative could be built for him to receive his first (even though he wouldn’t technically win it – Japan would).