Perfect Days

Wenders follows Hirayama, who cleans public toilets in Tokyo and lives by a quiet, exact routine: cassette tapes, secondhand paperbacks, the light through trees photographed on an old film camera. The film asks almost nothing of plot and everything of attention, and it rewards the latter completely. Kōji Yakushō gives a performance built almost entirely from small gestures and one devastating final close-up. It is a film about contentment that takes contentment seriously — not as resignation but as a discipline, a daily decision to find the world sufficient. It leaves you wanting to live more carefully.