Perfect Days 2024
I too am dreaming about the light and shadows on the wall, the ones that dance as the leaves sway in the wind. I am dreaming of them the way this film dreams of them. Perfect Days is a film that, like its ever-present Tokyo toilet cleaner Hirayama, is captivated by the way the light and shadows play with one another. He and the film are so taken by them, in fact, that they both dream in that shadowlight language.
Those shimmering images, in and of themselves, are enough to fill hours of dreams. What this film suggests about those images, though, is even more dreamworthy. The movie considers the way each image that is seen happens only once. In a way, the scene outside your window only exists at this moment and will never be repeated exactly this way. Through this idea, the film is suggesting things about art, life, and temporality.
Director Wim Wenders follows our protagonist through the rhythms of his waking, his daily cleaning work, his decompression in the evening, and then follows him as he drifts off to sleep and dreams. At first we brace ourselves for an artistic exercise that is more satisfying in theory than in the watching. We can imagine a version of this film that tries to underline the idea of the nobility of daily life and work but that tests our patience until the point we are secretly thankful to see the credits roll. In fact, though, this is a film that I really wanted to stick with long after the credits rolled. I wanted to join Hirayama in his daily work and routines. I wanted to see what he sees and hear what he hears. (I want to say smell what he smells, but I think I would be exaggerating there. 😊 ) To tell the truth, I wanted to sit at his feet and learn more from him. What a rare thing to experience in a cinematic character!
We want to learn, of course, how this man can seemingly enjoy and look forward to work that many of us would consider a slog. We want to learn how he uses his free time in the lovely ways he does. He appreciates the trees and the light and grabs hold of those images with his camera. That is not all that he appreciates, though. There seems to be a constant presence of art in his life….photography, music, literature. We can imagine that this art serves as a commentator and companion to him in his everyday life. Perhaps this art is one of the ways he receives the strength to press on joyfully in what would seem to be a daily and repetitive grind? Perhaps he sees the light and shadows and even the toilets through the compelling refractive lens of the art that fills his life. Perhaps the art whispers to him of an eternity that transcends mundanity, an eternity that will someday show us the meaning of the mysteries of our current everyday lives.
So what of eternity? Are we to despair that each play of the shadows is never to be repeated? Could it be that Hirayama is considering this and sometimes even shedding tears over it? Yet let’s not forget there is one point in this film when joy seems to be intermingled with his tears.
I cannot speak with knowledge about the Shinto or Buddhist understanding of images that only exist for this moment in time. As a Christian, I am taught to hope and look forward to a new heavens and a new earth that will be revealed when Christ returns. The idea of a new earth, in particular, excites me with the possibility that light, shadows and trees will not only still exist for all eternity but will be more beautiful than ever they were before.
There is a grieving that the shadowplay will not be seen in this way again. Yet that grieving leads to a thirst to drink in each moment and image before it vanishes, a thirst to appreciate and give thanks for what we see before us right at this moment. Once in a while, too, that grieving can give way to a joyful hope that an eternity may be coming on the heels of this temporal world. The hope is that it could be an eternity filled with endless wondrous variations on the shadow dance. The dance happens this precise way only once at this moment in time. Someday, though, the dance may go on with each moment as new as the first time the shadows played with the light.
