Every morning in Tokyo, a middle-aged man opens the door of his small apartment, looks up at the sky with a serene smile, buys a coffee from a vending machine, and sets about repeating what he does every day. Perfect Days begins like this, introducing us to Hirayama, a public toilet cleaner who lives immersed in a simple, ritualised routine. We watch him clean those glass-walled bathrooms in city parks with meticulous care, as though polishing something precious, always with more than enough calm and dedication. At first glance, nothing happens: Wenders simply shows us the flow of a good and quiet man's life, but from that simplicity a profound everyday poetry gradually emerges. Perfect Days is, in the director's own words, "a pure act of optimism" that contrasts with the anxiety of the modern world. The film composes a contemplative ode to the beauty of the ordinary and to the fullness hidden in every habitual gesture.
Hirayama's routine structures the narrative like a score of repeated gestures with slight variation. Each day resembles the one before it, but is never identical: the sunlight filtering through the branches (that Japanese komorebi the protagonist so loves) never draws the same pattern twice, nor are the leaves he photographs exact copies of yesterday's. The film teaches us to perceive those minimal, meaningful variations from one day to the next, underscoring that if we learn to live fully in the present, there is no such thing as routine, only a chain of unique moments. Hirayama savours each of those everyday instants with humble gratitude: he waters his plants, takes a break to watch the wind in the leaves, reads a few pages of a novel each night before sleep. His modest life reveals itself as brimming with simple pleasures, with a quiet spirituality. In this sense, Perfect Days offers a defence of the beauty hidden in the everyday, dignifying even the humblest work and celebrating the inner peace born of embracing the simple. Hirayama, in the privacy of his small apartment, surrounded by his books and cassette tapes, finds solace in the nightly rituals of his routine.
Japanese sensibility runs through the film in a subtle but essential way. Hirayama performs his work with methodical devotion, not as someone carrying out an unpleasant task but almost as someone practising an art or a daily act of faith. His serene attitude turns those spotless bathrooms into small urban sanctuaries, and through his example we come to understand that the dignity of a trade does not come from external prestige but from the care and respect with which it is practised. Wenders, looking in from outside as an admirer of Japanese culture, also captures Tokyo's particular harmony: a megalopolis where the individual finds meaning by contributing to the collective order. Far from the tourist postcard of garish neons, Perfect Days walks us through quiet parks, familiar streets and pockets of calm in the middle of the city, drawing attention to the unnoticed beauty of common spaces. The camera observes without hurry, reflecting a society that knows how to coexist in calm and courtesy. In this visual poem, Tokyo is not merely a backdrop but a tacit character: a space where modernity and tradition coexist, and where a simple man can find his private paradise amid the crowd.
Though Perfect Days centres on the chosen solitude of its protagonist, it also explores the human connections that gently brush against his life. Relationships here are presented with the same subtlety as the rest of the film, suggested rather than declared. Hirayama is sparing with words but attentive in his gestures: he treats a younger, scatterbrained colleague with patience and kindness, greets with courtesy the strangers who use the toilets, and when his teenage niece turns up unexpectedly at his door, he takes her in without fuss, offering refuge and understanding. With this niece, a kindred spirit fleeing an unhappy home, Hirayama forms a silent bond: they share books, music and knowing looks that say more than words. Every character who crosses Hirayama's path plays a subtle role in his story, revealing a facet of the meaning he gives to his days. Without resorting to obvious explanations, the film lets us glimpse that behind the protagonist's placidity lie absences and renunciations from the past; but those shadows are expressed only in the ellipsis of a hidden family photograph or a furtive tear at the wheel. The human connections in Perfect Days are like brief notes in a melody: discreet but deeply resonant, capable of moving us without fanfare. And when the film seems as though it might not say much more, the second half deepens into themes it avoided in the first. That string of human encounters running through it is essential to understanding the ending. First with his niece, then with the ex-husband of the woman who runs the restaurant he frequents. Hirayama comes face to face with the importance of these connections, he feels empathy, pain, happiness. All of it comes together in the final scene.
Music holds a privileged place in Perfect Days: it is the echo of Hirayama's inner world and an emotional counterpoint to the austerity of his daily life. For long stretches we hear only ambient sounds, water while scrubbing, the whisper of wind in the trees, distant traffic, as the film avoids unnecessary dialogue and immerses us in an eloquent silence. But from that stillness emerge the songs from the old cassette collection Hirayama treasures in his kei car. They are seventies tracks playing on his tape deck: The Kinks, Van Morrison, Otis Redding, Patti Smith... pieces selected with care that accompany precise moments of his day. These melodies are not mere background music but part of the narrative itself; by existing within the diegetic world of the film, they reveal shades of the protagonist without the need for words. Thus, when we hear Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" we grasp the sincere irony with which Hirayama lives his perfect day, woven of placid routines and small joys. Similarly, at a certain dawn, "House of the Rising Sun" bursts from his car radio with a vibrant crescendo that fills the screen with energy, until he arrives at work and the music cuts abruptly, giving way to the real sounds of water and brush on the floor. Moments like that briefly illuminate the character's inner life, "I feel good," the musical selection seems to whisper, and let us glimpse deep emotions where the camera shows only an impassive face.
By the time Perfect Days ends, one feels one has been through a humble but intense spiritual journey. Without didacticism or excess, Wenders makes us appreciate the fullness of simplicity and the intrinsic dignity of an ordinary life. The film flows like an intimate diary in images: it makes us share in Hirayama's quiet happiness, a happiness made of routines shared with trees, books and music. In its lyrical contemplation, Perfect Days invites us to rethink what a "perfect day" truly is. Perhaps, Wenders seems to suggest, perfection lies in the attentive gaze Hirayama turns on each ordinary dawn; in that capacity to find the extraordinary in the everyday. Walking out of this film, what lingers is the resonance of his morning smile and of a Tokyo freshly woken, reminding us that even the most modest of days holds the promise of an unexpected beauty.